Police_Sour_Relation_with_Minority_Communities__a_Problem_That_Needs_News_Media_Attention

One summer afternoon in Brooklyn New York, I and my roommate heard disturbing noise from right next to my roommate’s window. We rushed towards the window and looked downstairs and what we saw was a group of guys beating up one particular guy who was bleeding from every part of his body (it seemed).We quickly rushed to pick up the phone and called the cops as the beating didn’t seem like ending. In the call, we gave a vivid account of what was going on and then waited for the cops and an ambulance to show up at the scene bearing in mind that the Precinct was less than six blocks away. To our surprise, no ambulance ever showed up while all we saw was a cop car patrol the scene for a little while. It could have been one of their regular routines too but the bottom line is that there was no response to the call. When we talked about this with my friend’s uncle, he made a comment I came to realize the truth in: “If you guys were so concerned and wanted them to respond, you should have told them that the person be beaten was a white person and see how efficient they would be”. This might sound ridiculous but it is a notorious fact that black on black crime in the big cities is generally ignored by the police. In addition to this, living in major cities with high percentage of minorities could be best described as living in a “Prisoner of War camp” when you take into consideration how the cops treat minorities in heavily populated minority areas. Still using Brooklyn NY as reference, from my experiences there, there was a time when kids in their teens were getting shot weekly during drug bursts only for it to be found that they were unarmed. There was this particular incident where the cops teaseled a mentally derailed man who stood naked on his mother’s balcony. The cop did this, with full knowledge of the direction he was going to fall toward. The harmless man died. There are countless stories like this; very many streamed online, many more captured by surveillance cameras as well. To a nation, stories like this build negative sentiments among races as most of these cops are usually white. Te news media has to bring this into attention not only as news items, but opinion shows should also attempt to dwell on this from the minorities’ perspective. Human life is precious and there have been just too many “mistakes” in carrying out justice. The relationship between the cops and minority groups should go beyond “cop and suspect” and the news media could influence general public opinion which in turn would put pressure on cops to review racial profiling and other racially charged attitudes or schemes towards minorities.