Newspaper Inspired Piece

The first newspaper blackout I did talks about young Americans likeliness to encounter police vs adults. While younger Americans are about equally likely to say they've had an encounter with police, young black adults are much more likely than whites to say they've been arrested or harassed. Twenty eight percent of blacks say they have been arrested after encounters with law enforcement, 24 percent say they have been personally harassed by police, and 53 percent say they know someone who has. This statistic really makes me think, are police really that racially biased, do they commit that much more crime, or do they just get caught more often than whites because of the racial bias? This issue has risen up a ton in the last few years in places like Ferguson. In short, it is a huge controversy as to wether or not white police are being racially biased in some of these cases. I personally have thought it is a little bit annoying constantly hearing about those things. I think as long as people are being treated equal by police, there is no complaining we can do, but I don't know everything about these stories. I do know that, no matter the race of the person, if they have a gun and seem threatening to you as a police officer, you should take care of the situation properly. I think in close to all of these cases, if not all, the police are just reacting to the situation the best they can. They only have a split second before making the decision on how to handle these types of situations, so I don't think it is right for people to be automatically assuming anything just because the suspect happened to be black. We need to think about the fact that they are doing their job and reacting to scary situations fast, and every once in a while they may make the wrong decision.