The surge of violence has been a recent issue among cities around the nation. This year's violence has arisen after the Chicago Police Department received very harsh criticism regarding their alleged use of brutal force among black Americans in the city. This national attention for the shootings from officers, highlighting its solid history of violent misconduct. A now infamous video released in November of 2015 showed 17-year-old Laquan McDonald being shot 16 times as he walked away, the police set off a chain of events that roiled Chicago. There have been first-degree murder charges filed against the officer, Jason Van Dyke, the firing of Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy, these are steps to, as many argue, an apology from Mayor Rahm Emanuel and the start of a major United States Justice Department civil rights investigation into Chicago Police Department’s use of excessive force. Although, Chicago, being the nation's third most populated city, Chicago by far outpaces New York City, Los Angeles and every other large city in America in the sheer number of homicide and shooting victims, though it fares better than some smaller cities on a per capita comparison. Several newscast around the Chicago area have released data that states there has been over 700 shootings since January 1, 2016, that number alone outweighs other major cities in the United States.

Hometown Issues

According to The Chicago Tribune, the Chicago Police Department is focusing on neighborhood outreach -- which would arguably be a shift for a department trying to create better relations with the community. Such units in the past have been criticized for harsh treatment of residents and failure to improve citizens' trust. Superintendent John Escalante pointed to gang conflicts that erupt on social media as a contributing factor in the city's violence. He states, “social media taunting, social media threats, social media disrespecting has really increased over the last couple years And we know that some of the shootings are based on that and some of the retaliation is based on that. That's not the sole contributor for the spike in violence,” he continued. “But definitely when you look over the last couple of years, that has a lot to do with it.”

Still, criminologists say the number of shootings more accurately depicts the nature of violence in a city than homicides. The Police Department started keeping track of shootings as a crime category in 2011. The 2,939 people shot in Chicago last year — wounded and killed — is the highest total since then. “When someone pulls a trigger, the intention is to murder," said Arthur Lurigio, a professor of psychology and criminal justice at Loyola University Chicago. "The intention is not to injure. The intention is usually not to intimidate when you're shooting at a person.” Criminologists caution against making year-by-year of comparisons of homicides, arguing that long-term trends give a better understanding of how the level of violence in a city has changed over time. There might be some truth to these arguments and we all know that social media plays a huge role in gang violence, black crime, and police brutality against minorities, but that doesn't explain why these issues have been unresolved and reoccurs throughout the history of black Americans and the present.

Despite many advances in my understanding of the post 1900’s urban conditions of African Americans in the United States, an important gap remains. Karl E. Johnson, scholar of African American history, argues one of the issues is the way urban cities and social places were policed by white law enforcement officials. In places like Chicago, African American conflicts with law enforcement officials were a pretty consistent problem throughout most of the 20th century, “and in the post-World War II era volatile incidents involving African Americans residents and white police officers were common and often made newspaper headlines” (Johnson). The American police seem to have a very long history of violent behavior among minorities. American law enforcers have often relied on rough justice and lethal force to establish their authority and to maintain order. For example, scholars have noticed the impact racial conflict had on restricting African Americans’ full use of social and economical space and how that results in violence. In the early 40’s and 50’s certain recreational areas such as public pools and movie theaters and social venues were off limits to blacks because they were known for the threat of violence from white police officials and residents. White residents back then, had very negative stereotypes and fear of African Americans regarding competition for jobs and housing, which made it acceptable for white police officials to abandon the oath to protect and serve and turn to incarceration as a means to control the growth of black people and black success.

The force has always been used to control the integration of whites and blacks, and to keep blacks in jail for petty crimes. From the 1870s through the 1920s, the Chicago Police Department compiled a log of its homicides cases, along with a brief description of each one. Alder says that the records were distinctive for two reasons: the police clerks maintained them consistently and the number of each cases for each year from the mid-1870s onward is nearly identical to the tallies in the health department sources and other records. He argues that this is a capture-recapture technique for the estimation of missing data that confirms the extraordinary comprehensiveness of the police logs. The other reason it was distinctive is “the records report even those deaths that were to be ruled justifiable homicides, as well as other deaths for which coroner’s juries exonerated the policeman involved, thereby forestalling further legal proceedings. Cases in which police officers employed deadly force, including those what would be termed self-defense shootings or justifiable homicides, appear in the records as ‘homicides’ (Adler). With this research one can conclude that the Chicago Police Department had an unusual way of reporting the shootings around the city and couldn't keep accurate records of it. It also shows the long period of time the city has committed questionable behavior regarding the policing of civilians and the attitude behind it. Author Adler has touched on a very interesting idea. It seems that policemen in Chicago had an unusual incentive for reporting cases in which they employed deadly force on minorities. For killings in which policemen used deadly force, local prosecutors secured convictions in only one percent of cases. Not only in Chicago, but in the St. Louis as well. Many are unaware of the aggressiveness that the police force experienced across gender by youth in these neighborhoods. The authors, Rod Brunson and Jody Miller, have argued the importance of examining the perspectives from minorities, especially black youth and dig deep in interviews with youth from St. Louis to investigate how gender shapes interactions with the police.

I noticed the data revealed the important gendered facts of black youth experiences with the policing practices in their communities and their expectations of law enforcement. Young black men describe being treated as suspects regardless of their involvement with criminal activities and also reported police violence. For young black women they seem to be targeted for curfew violations and expressed the concern of sexual misconduct. This is interesting because the youth that were a part of this received data are living in the same region as the ones from Chicago. The study highlighted the different harms of the urban policing for African American young women and men and the shows the need for the systematic attention to the intersections of race and gender in research on criminal justice practices.

With the information given it is natural to conclude that race and police attitudes are linked in the United States. There are several black Americans being racial profiled and harassed for several years, because others have a negative few of them. Police have for centuries been used as a way to keep blacks in order and make sure they stay in their place economically, physically, and emotionally. The history of policing is arguably linked to racists acts and appeared when Jim Crow laws were in place in the south and during the Civil Rights Movement. Police tactics were to control the situation because the majority group did not feel safe and the black residents were not abiding by the rules of the land. As a student of minority studies, the research that was given showed the importance of police codes and their own culture as officials that protect and serve our communities. But, it seems like the white police officials are only protecting and serving themselves and the majority groups, perpetuating the images that black residents are dangerous and all are part of black violence and crime. When in reality they are just generalizing all black people in the world on social media, and television making all black people evil and out of control, ultimately justifying how harshly they are treated by police officers.

For centuries the police have had multiple negative comments made about them all over the world and they are mostly from minority civilians that are from poor urban neighborhoods. Multiple surveys showed how black residents, male and female, from St. Louis and Chicago who admit that they have or someone they know have all experienced bad encounters with their local police officers. They admit to witnessing the excessive force, the embarrassment, and the disrespect they receive as just bystanders in their own communities. They talk about their neighborhoods being policed by officers who they do not feel has their best interests at heart. The officers patrol their areas and harasses them when often times they are not doing anything illegal. Because of such behaviors for centuries this has built extreme mistrust of the police and it is shown at a local level and at a national level. I personally don't understand how many can ignore this prevalent issue in our society when it has been repeatedly seen throughout our history. Police officers were driven by racial prejudices and with that fuel they have used for centuries the trust with black communities have always been an issue.

The surveys show that although many white, black, and other minorities see several videotaped harassment of minority residents only black minds are affected by the beatings. Whites feel like the police are there to protect them, and their neighborhoods, but blacks feel like they are racially motivated and use excessive force every time they have an encounter. How can everyone see the same video of a person being beaten and unarmed or a cop shooting a teenager that is unarmed and there not be questions as to why it is a repeated issue. The essay examined several time periods where the officials beat, or killed an unarmed black male or female, but the mass majority doesn’t see an issue because the police are “policing” and making sure they are safe from all the negative pictures they see of minorities on their news stations. There is no explanation for the excessive behavior then it being a complete tradition of the way police officers in American treat their black civilians. It is so common in the nation multiple black males and females have been found dead in police custody and no one is questioning why? Why is this happening now in 2016? I’m curious is to why it is just being questioned because it has been happening for centuries. If a race related issue such as this one being connected to police relations reoccurs throughout history it is our job as Americans to note them and not accept it in a normative fashion. Never will I accept the shootings of unarmed black children in my nation. Never will I stop making others aware of the history that is showing up in our day to day interactions.

It is not an intention to surface multiple issues that have occurred in our American history and leave others with feeling doubtful that there is light at the end of the tunnel, because there is. There is hope. The point of talking about the history of policing in America is to look at where we as a nation went wrong. By allowing police officers to control the advancement of minorities and kill them off because of how they look perpetuates the bad relationships they have with minority communities. It does not build trust that the police are there to protect and serve if they are harassing and harming the people they are supposed to be protecting. The intention is to highlight the negative to bring closure to the black civilians who have lost loved ones to bad policing. To show that there is work to be done. Having police officers practicing the same tactics they have been for centuries only produces more negative attitudes about the police, more dead bodies of minorities, and more guns for the police to use unnecessarily. Protecting and serving does not mean harass innocent and kill unarmed black males and females to maintain order because of excessive force and bad policing. There is much work to do to help relieve the racial tension and the trust blacks have for their local police and police nationally. In no way does the research found show that the police changed their tactics over time, which means they have had this same idea of blacks and other minorities being uncivilized and dangerous when in reality they are not as a whole. The same tactics are evident because several excessive force cases are repeated through history and in my hometown of Chicago. There needs to be change on both sides, and many public officials need to apologize to the urban communities for the unfair treatment. I do not believe that this issue of bad policing among blacks will just stop because it would have already if it was possible, but there are other ways to maintain a healthy relationship among police and citizens, we just have to continue to work at it. This is not a bandaid fixed situation, and it will cause for both parties to change immediately. One can not happen without the other and working together will eliminate the hateful attitudes and behaviors. We want more African Americans working and having a job to support their families so they can turn away from the life of crime, and the police can stop perpetuating ideas that they are bad people because generally speaking we are not.

People want to live peacefully and know that they can be safe in their neighborhoods and not brutally beaten by a person in a badge and know that because they are police they will not be held responsible for it. That was prevalent in the King incident. We have seen it in multiple cases. If that is not solved then there will be no relationship.