Inductive Reasoning Kills Dozens “Excuse me, miss, can I see your license and registration, please?” Great. Pulled over once again, except this time I don’t even know what I did wrong. Apparently I made an unsafe lane change that resulted in an improper U-turn. I tried asking the officer what I did wrong, but as soon as I began speaking, he started talking over me. “Are you even from around here?” he asked me. “You look like you should’ve never even gotten your license.”
“Yes, sir. I live here and make this turn every day. I’m not sure what I did wrong this time,” I responded in my most innocent voice. All three times I had been pulled over prior to that day, I managed to get out of getting a ticket. This police officer, however, was not
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In this passage, Schulz explores the pros and cons of inductive reasoning, which she describes as “the strategy of guessing based on past experience.” She then goes on to say that this strategy is very helpful because it helps us come to conclusions much faster. Usually, these conclusions we come to are correct. However, when we make bad assumptions, inductive reasoning can be very dangerous. To extend her argument, Schulz discusses multiple examples of induction gone wrong. She talks about how stereotypes are formed due to leaping to conclusions, a bias of inductive reasoning. Along with this, Schulz brings up how induction is also responsible for the continuation of stereotypes. Also, Schulz brings up the fact that sometimes evidence can be looking us right in our faces, yet we will ignore it or distort it in order to hold on to our previously made conclusions. This is known as confirmation bias, which is “the tendency to give more weight to evidence that confirms our beliefs than to evidence that challenges them.” This is the downfall of inductive reasoning; it’s not perfect, and we’re bound to be wrong at least some of the …show more content…
In the videos all over the news and internet we have seen numerous cases of innocent lives of black people in the United States being taken. It was found that “nearly 1 in 3 black people killed by police in 2015 were identified as unarmed, though the actual number is likely higher due to underreporting” (“Police Killed More”). While about 33% of victims have been unarmed, for some reason these officers’ first instincts were to pull out their guns and shoot. These instincts are likely attributed to these officers’ past experience with violent black criminals; yet, what about their experiences with violent white criminals? Why don’t we hear about innocent, unarmed white lives being taken by the police force? It’s because it’s much less likely to happen. According to 2015 reports, unarmed blacks were killed five times faster than whites (“Police Killed More”). Also, based on a project by The Guardian, “black males between the ages of 15 and 34 are nine times more likely to be killed by police than any other demographic” (Craven). This evidence shows that safe to say that because there aren’t really any stereotypes on white people to be violent, the officers don’t initially think to pull out their guns and shoot. Stereotypes attached to young black males such as being violent thugs and criminals are the only logical explanation or excuse for
Today police officers are trained to kill. Steven Rosenfeld, a journalist in civil liberties for Alternet said, “The militarization of local police has been growing...They face few consequences for making mistakes, such as maiming or killing people” (Rosenfeld). This shows that the local police officers are trained with military tactics and receive no penalty for their wrong actions. Not only is there an increase in police brutality, it seems as if they are targeting specific nationalities. Tony Brown, a writer for Raw Story agrees by saying “young black males in recent years were at far greater risk of being shot dead by police than their white counterparts”(Brown). Brown is blantly saying that the police seem to target one group to discriminate against. According to Brown it is 21 times greater chance for a black male to be killed over other
Now in the case of Schulz, she talks about the famous philosopher Descartes. He brings up the argument that “error does not arise from believing something that isn’t true, but believing in insufficient evidence” (362). Descartes wanted to be an ideal thinker and take in every bit of evidence he possibly could before drawing a conclusion.
“We will catch you and there will be consequences, criminal consequences, loss of licenses and even a jail term,” Col. Thomas Robbins, Massachusetts State Police warned aggressive drivers at the launch of ‘Road Respect’, a Spring Mobilization program at the Newton Police headquarters on the morning of April 4.
Scott Robinson moved from Houston to Cincinnati in 2007. Before leaving, Mr. Robinson sold his Hyundai Santa Fe to a used car dealer in Rosenberg, Texas. Due to clerical errors at the dealer, Scott's car was sold with his license plates still attached to the vehicle. The new owner of the vehicle ran a stoplight and when the license plate was read, Mr. Robinson's information was pulled up. When he finally received his ticket, it was too late for him to protest the charges even when providing proof of sale for the vehicle.(Geor...
In this week’s supplementary reading, author Lydia Polgreen evaluates the recent string of deaths of unarmed black men, all attributed to police officers. The deaths of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Freddie Gray in Baltimore, and Laquan McDonald in Chicago have pushed the issues of race relations and institutional racism to the forefront of societal issues in America. Adding fuel to the fire is the fact that in most of these cases, the officers accused of the unlawful deaths are usually given the benefit of the doubt and found innocent by jurors. This has culminated in the schism in public opinion of the police force. White individuals are more likely to support the officers’ use of deadly force, while black individuals are far more likely to
In 2014, the death of Eric Garner in New York City raised controversial conversations and highlighted the issues of race, crime, and policing in neighborhoods that tend to be poor and racially isolated. Garner, an unarmed black man, was killed after being tackled and held in a “chokehold.” According to the AP Polls in December 2014, “Police killings of unarmed blacks were the most important news stories of 2014.” The problem is that young black men are targeted by police officers in which they have responded with the misuse of force and policy brutality. It is evident that this issue affects many people nationwide. The civilians do not trust the police department and the justice system because they hold the perceptions that police officers are immune from prosecution despite their actions. In particular, black individuals, specifically black males, do not feel safe in the presence of police officers because they are not held accountable for their mistakes.
Let’s begin with the most known, Rodney G. King. Rodney was caught by the Los Angeles police on March 3rd, 1991 after a high speed chase. He was beaten by officers with their batons. A video was taken of the whole incident. The officers were acquitted. Numerous people of all colors became livid after they heard this. There were protest and riots, although many just wanted whites and blacks to come together. There are several other accounts of police brutality among individuals. To name a few; Robert Davis, Frank Jude, Steve Biko, Sean Bell, Kathryn Johnston, and the list goes on and on. What many might not notice is all the names I stated are black individuals. Zachary Hammond was a white unarmed teen who was killed on July 26, 2015. His case did a lot of attention but not nearly as much attention as any of the people I stated above. This proves a good point that Caucasian people can be shut out when it comes to police brutality. It seems as many don’t believe that whites are brutalized by police. This can be an example of falsely stereotyping one another. There are other ways we falsely stereotype one another. For example if you live in an area where there is a high population of one color of individuals no matter black or white and abundance of the police officers who watch over that area are the other color, it’s not hard to make an assumption that those officers are racist when they use excessive
To illustrate, majority of blacks are stop by police more than any other racial groups. Police brutality is base on ethnicity. Officers seem to target black communities for many reasons. Racist cops might view blacks as less innocent compared to whites. Growing up as an African American you witness hearing your parents telling your male siblings to respect officers and to interact with them differently than they would do their families and friends. After the fatal shooting of Mike Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. The public wanted justice because the incident was not handled properly. The people wanted to express their concerns. After this incident I remember more allegation from black communities begin surfacing that the police use excessive force against them,
Police shootings occur all over the world but are a huge problem within the United States. We continue to hear more and more about them. These shootings are making headlines. Front page news it seems almost weekly. All the shootings go one of two ways. Either a Police Officer has been shot or a Police Officer has shot a citizen, but either way the final result is death. Whether an Officer has been shot or an Officer has shot someone these cases seem to be related to one thing, fear. People in today’s society feel as though they can’t trust Police Officers as they are there to hurt and kill them. And Police Officers feel as though they are in danger of doing their everyday duties because people see them as the “bad guys” and want to hurt or kill them. Yes, police brutality and racism still exist, but not all cops are bad. Yes there are still bad citizens in this world that want to kill and harm others, but not all citizens are bad. People seem to react to these shootings by rioting quickly after a police officer has shot and killed someone without
What most people would think is that only black men and women are killed by police officers. Yet this year there has actually been more white individuals killed by police officers than any other race. This is only a problem, because when you read about police killings it is almost all about how police target people of color. With this idea it makes it so that people of color feel more like a victim in the country and are then scared of police officers, who are supposed to be there to help. The statistic of white people being killed by police officers is not covered by the media, because it is not as intriguing or as controversial as the other stories. It is very important that people know that police killings as a whole is an issue not just police killing minorities. Using social imagination and looking at this problem you can see why you would not want one group to feel victimized, which would lead to them striking back at the people that are there to help
"No officer, I don't know what happened after the accident. I can't even remember my name."
It is 8:45 and Paul has just gotten on the interstate to make his normal commute to Longview from Tyler. About halfway there, Paul notices a state trooper right behind him. He frantically checks his speed! Too late!!!!!! The state trooper turns on his lights. Not only was Paul speeding, but now he will be late to a very important meeting at work.
As we cruised around the community, he pointed out countless minor traffic violations, both moving and non-moving, but opted not to make any stops. At this point he stated his main concern was to spot any impaired drivers and get them off the road. Eventually, as we came up behind an older civic (the Civic had a broken brake light) on Centreville Road, the officer stated that he detected the scent of marijuana coming from the Civic. The driver of the Civic noticed Crutchman’s police cruiser behind him and dropped his speed to 5 mph under the posted limit. Officer Crutchman began tailing the vehicle which immediately turned off on the next available road. We proceeded to follow the Civic for a couple of miles. I could tell that Officer Crutchman wanted to make the stop, and I inquired why he hadn’t done so already on account of the Civic’s faulty brake light. He responded that he is cautious about making such stops because he does not want a “new law named after him” on account of the controversy surrounding pretextual stops. It is possible that this careful attitude has developed as a result of the rising public outcry against police and
There are several beliefs of how police officers treat different racial groups. Several people say police officers are ethical and that they are just doing their job furthermore, its the doing of the suspects that causes the need of unwarranted force by the police officers. The chance of this is very reasonable, but then issue that comes to birth, is if this was true and police are just doing their jobs and being fair, why these events are mostly happening to minorities. Why are so many minorities constantly being pulled over for stop and frisk situations, frequently being killed? Unfortunately, racism remains in this day of age and it is ubiquitously in our society, and also in the criminal justice system. I think that race has affects that are positive and negative prejudices concerning the police. Numerous people think that, race is a factor that has lost a great deal of beneficial power as the U.S. develops as an increasingly international
Protests around the world have taken place to fight for justice in the black community. The immense number of deaths of unarmed black men and women is a clear sign that they are more likely to be killed by police than white people. Physical violence and excessive use of force by the U.S. police towards African Americans are seen in the news regularly. “People, including police officers, hold strong implicit associations between blacks, and probably Hispanics, and weapons, crime and aggression," said Jack Glaser. Police brutality statistics show that African Americans are three times more likely to be murdered by cops than any other race. Racial disparity in the United States is a coherent reason for the increase of criminal injustice in the United