Kotas 1

Christian Kotas
Professor Gretchen Pratt
UWRT 1102-014
25 April 2015
Racism? That still exists?
Officer Darren Wilson a six year, police veteran with no disciplinary actions against him
responded to a robbery call in Ferguson, unfortunately the night would end with a young black
male dead and an officer being pursued by racial injustice groups. Yes, I'm talking about the fatal
shooting of 18 year old Michael Brown Jr. after this tragedy occurred the town of Ferguson went
into a downward spiral that would ultimately lead to riots and many more arrests. This incident
not only affected all of the residents in Ferguson but also the multiple law enforcement officers
who have been gunned down in the name of racial bias by the police. Most of the time when an
officer involved shooting occurs, not many people care so long as it was a justified shooting.
However under some questionable circumstances a shooting can become front page news like we
saw in Ferguson. This incident would later be determined a justifiable shooting, which would
lead to Officer Wilson not be convicted of any charges. Although Wilson was not convicted on
any charges and found innocent, the town of Ferguson disagreed and started to protest in
Browns name, ultimately this would lead to violent riots and many more people being arrested.
This is not a single incident of the police being put in the spotlight for possible racism, it is a
trend that some would say has been going on since the beginning of the police department.

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The Implicit Association Test

There is a very interesting organization on the internet called Project Implicit and there
goal is: The goal of the organization is to educate the public about implicit social cognition and
to provide a virtual laboratory a novel way for researchers to collect data on the Internet
(Project Implicit: About us). The Implicit Association Test determines your standings and
feelings toward African American vs. European American, this was my result Your data suggest
a slight automatic preference for European American compared to African American. I also had
my roommate take the IAT and his results were Your data suggest a moderate automatic
preference for European American compared to African American. This came as a surprise to
me because I always thought that I was neutral when it came to race. 51 percent of online test
takers show moderate to strong bias (Mooney). Its true but we dont often think about race and
how it plays a role in our lives, while we can clearly see that over half the test takers showed
racial bias. Something that no one talks about are that police officers arent the Ivy League
school rich kids, theyre normal people that are willing to die protecting us. Why is it that
whenever we see or hear an officer do something racist its front page news? If some random
person said the same thing they would simply get some weird looks from people. It is true that
we hold the police to a higher standard and we should. How is it fair if everything that they say
or do is immediately scrutinized by the media and the public?
Ones black, ones white, who cares?
Most of the time when a shooting occurs, one of the first things that people think is, why?
Sometimes we make up our minds about what happened simply based on the individuals
involved, even though we dont know the whole story we think of a reason of why it happened.
For example, if a white man shoots a black man, some people will immediately think of him as

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being racist and just shooting a black person. If a black man shoots a white person you would
typically think that the black person was up to no good and just shot the white man. These are
both stereotypes that people have developed over time and through the media, typically when we
hear about a crime, we hear about a white cop shooting an armed minority robbing a gas station,
you dont hear cop kills suspect robbing gas station. You may be wondering why they wouldnt
just say what happened and the reason is, its more of an attention grabber when race is involved.
Like the first paragraph when I was describing the shooting of Michael Brown Jr., I used race all
throughout the description because if I just put Officer Wilson shot unarmed suspected robber
Michael Brown Jr. shortly after robbery reported in the area then you would have just thought
about how Michael probably wasnt listening and he did something to warrant the shooting. If all
you heard was what I just said then you would not have had race even come into your thoughts
and why should it? It was simple right, a suspected thief was shot leaving the scene of a reported
robbery, no complications, no racial factors playing a role, just facts!
The fall out
Since the unfortunate shooting of Michael Brown Jr., a lot has happened in the name of
his death Two uniformed NYPD officers were shot dead Saturday afternoon as they sat in their
marked police car on a Brooklyn street corner in what investigators believe was a crazed
gunmans assassination-style mission to avenge Eric Garner and Michael Brown (Celona,
Cohen, Schram, Jamieson and Italiano). The deaths Of Officer Liu and Officer Ramos were
completely unsuspected and uncalled for. Riots in Ferguson have also remained fairly steady
since Michaels death leading to multiple arrests and injuries to both police and protesters. No
warning, no provocation they were quite simply assassinated, targeted for their uniform,
(Celona, Cohen, Schram, Jamieson and Italiano). This is something that police face every day by

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the very criminals that they protect us from and through all of the recent protests police are
having a tougher time doing their job. There was no reason for the two NYPD officers to be
killed while they sat in their cruiser in New York, the motive behind the shooting was revenge
for the suspected racist actions.
One thing that not too many people talk about is the fact that for every one bad police
officer there are thousands of good ones that do their job and protect their community. Typically
when you see flashing blue and red lights behind you, you dont go Yay the police are here
youre probably more like Shit, what happened now? I wonder if anything interesting is
happening. The reason you dont react happily is because of the fact that you rarely interpret the
police as good because most of the time when you interact with them youre on the receiving end
of a ticket or worse. My point is you only see the bad things the police do in the media and not
the good things the police do, like when a police officer risks their life to get a bystander out of
the way of a gunfight or even takes a bullet protecting them.
The Medias influence
Although there were some questionable circumstances in the shooting, the entire situation
was blown way out of proportion by the media. Technology plays a very important role in
everything that is done today, people fear more about someone posting something bad about
them online more than they do confronting that person. If the media could simply deliver the
facts of what happens every day, a lot of things would be simpler and there would be a lot less
drama in the world, but people now make a living off of drama. Its easy to turn a shooting of
any kind into front page news if you can word the title correctly. If people only saw the facts and
not the opinions of the reporters, I believe that things would be a lot better. More people would
be able to form their own opinions of the police if they could be given the information without

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anyone elses personal input. If this were to happen, then I believe it would solve a lot of
Americas problems.
I can relate to how the media views the police because I am in the military and have
talked to people who have gone overseas and have learned more about what they do and how
they do it. The military is a lot like the police when it comes to the media and the way that
society views them. Normally, you dont get to see on the news about how a squad out on patrol
saved a village from an enemy attack that was trying to kill civilians. You also dont get to see all
the pictures of people in the military working with the local people to help fix the area and make
life better for them.
One story I was told by my recruiter Staff Sergeant Dixon was that after his unit
successfully countered an enemy attack that was trying to take a local village they started to
work with the village to repair the damage done by the fighting and try to make them allies to the
U.S. troops. Well, after they had fixed everything in the village, they sat down with the people in
charge of the village and asked them if there was anything else they could do for them. One of
the things that they asked for was ice cream because due to the fighting they hadnt received any
in a very long time and would really appreciate it if they could be given some. So his unit had
over a ton of ice-cream flown in and shared with the entire village, Staff Sergeant Dixon told me
that the entire villages faces lit up when they saw the ice cream and it made them cheerful. But
you never heard this story of how a U.S. army unit had ice cream flown out into the middle of
the desert to help ease the pain of all the fighting that was going on around them. The only thing
you hear about the Military is how expensive it is and that they like to fight people and go to war,
just like how you only hear about the bad things that the police do.

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The police do a very important and dangerous job, but because of the media makes it
even easier to paint a big red target on the backs of all law enforcement officers. The police
always try having the best and brightest on the force to help cooperation between the police and
the people, but if the people dont work with the police than how can we get past all of these
issues of race? As long as humans are police officers there will always be mistakes made and
people should understand that when you are faced with a life threatening situation, you are going
to do whatever it takes to keep yourself and all the innocent people around you safe.

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Works Cited

"About Us." Project Implicit. Harvard, 2011. Web. 26 Apr. 2015.

Celona, Larry, Shawn Cohen, Jamie Schram, Amber Jamieson, and Laura Italiano. "Gunman
Executes 2 NYPD Cops in Garner 'revenge'" New York Post. New York Post, 20
Dec. 2014. Web. 26 Apr. 2015.
Mooney, Chris. "The Science of Why Cops Shoot Young Black Men." Mother Jones. N.p., 1
Dec. 2014. Web. 25 Apr. 2015.