Survey Says.....One in Three Americans Believe Police "Routinely Lie to Serve Their Own Interests"
A survey conducted by Reuters and the IPSOS polling organization shows that nearly a third of Americans feel that police officers "routinely lie to serve their own interests."
When looking at solely African-Americans, the number rises to nearly half.
Despite the significant level of distrust shown by the survey, the majority of those polled approve of the job done by their local police. The exception again to this rule is that only half of the African-American community respondents approved of their local police.
Reuters reports:
MarQuis McClee, a small-business owner from Bloomington, Indiana, who took part in the poll, said that he generally trusts police and has officers among his relatives, but as an African-American, he can also be wary around law enforcement.
"I have been involved with officers who give police a bad name," McClee, 38, said, pointing to a recent incident where he was pulled over by an officer be believes was profiling him.
The poll also showed that nearly 70 percent of those polled believe that police target minorities. However, we do not need a poll to illustrate that this is a fact.
We can simply look at the statistics from the NYPD's stop and frisk program.
- In 2013, New Yorkers were stopped by the police 191,558 times.
169,252 were totally innocent (88 percent).
104,958 were black (56 percent).
55,191 were Latino (29 percent).
20,877 were white (11 percent).
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These numbers do not lie. Despite blacks and Latinos making up only half of New York City's population, they were nearly 8 times more likely to be stopped than a white person.
The IPSOS survey also showed that the nation is divided on the case of Ferguson. 60 percent of respondents had a favorable impression but among black American respondents, only 32 percent had a favorable impression.
Disproportionate policing based on race is sadly a fact of life in America.
According to a study by The Sentencing Project, more than 60% of the people in prison are now racial and ethnic minorities. For Black males in their thirties, 1 in every 10 is in prison or jail on any given day. These trends have been intensified by the disproportionate impact of the "war on drugs," in which two-thirds of all persons in prison for drug offenses are people of color.
"Proactive tactics aimed at keeping crime rates down in economically stressed areas with a high number of racial minorities can also cause friction between police and minority youth who are likely to be stopped and questioned," Larry Hoover, director of the Police Research Center at Sam Houston State University in Texas, told Reuters.
"There is no way that is going to be a pleasant experience, no matter how courteous an officer is," Hoover said.
While race is one of the most important issues among police reform in America, it is not the only one. The war on drugs indiscriminately lays waste to lives of people of all colors.
The other part of the problem is the color blue, and the violent unaccountable leviathan that it represents in police state America.
A racist idiot without a badge and uniform is simply a racist idiot, add the power of the state and that racist idiot lays waste to civil rights, initiates violence, and extorts the populace; all of this, with impunity.
