Law Enforcement and Racism

An interesting thing occurred while I researched this topic. My internet search using Bing turned up next to nothing on this topic. As a matter of fact, I was linked to a number of articles that were either about racism, or law enforcement and its use of social media, not one of the articles I was lead to had anything to do with law enforcement and racism, or racism among law enforcement officials.

I decided to attempt a different search using Twitter as my tool. By simply searching Twitter for the hashtags: #lawenforcement #racism. I found a long list of tweets that were reactions to incidents involving the police and someone of color, as well as tweets sharing articles addressing the issue of racism and the law. It begs the question: Why is it easier to find articles covering Law enforcement and racism on Twitter than it is through an internet search engine? Is there some kind of bias at work here?

During my search, an article from The Root peaked my interest. "The 7 Most Outrageous and Racist Acts Found in DOJ's report on Baltimore Police Department".  which pinpoints seven egregious and unlawful acts committed by the Baltimore Police Department.

One of the acts cited in the article, reports that a police Sergeant instructed another officer to make up a reason for stopping a group of black men, who were not breaking the law; all while investigators from the DOJ were riding in the squad car.

The thing that stands out to me the most in that incident is the apparent disregard that the Sergeant had, not only for the rights of the black men-who had done nothing wrong-but also for the officials riding in the car. He must have assumed the DOJ investigators were already on his side. His blatant attitude is staggeringly mind boggling. Surely, this kind of attitude is at the center of the controversy.