Do cops in the USA treat everyone equally?

16 comments

1. Some do some don’t

2. It depends. They are supposed to treat everyone equally, but there’s a lot of evidence showing that many police officers will be biased against people due to race or ethnic background. That if a white man drives faster than the speed limit, he will be more likely to just get a warning, but if a black man drives faster than the speed limit, he will be more likely to get a ticket.

   Our society has made improvements in the past few decades, but still has a long way to go.

3. There isn’t one answer

4. Lol

5. Entirely case by case, and area by area. In some areas, cops are taught to profile using factors such as race- unsure how common that is, and it probably went down following the Floyd protests.

   Ultimately, there’s no one answer.

6. There’s a small suburb near me that’s 100% white and has a police force of four. A black man worked in town, commuting from elsewhere. All four of the police stopped him before they knew him, asking what business he had in town. Once they knew him, they were friendly enough.

   But it can’t be very comfortable for black men to be stopped for being black. And of course, some police do much worse than that. But even the nice cops may be suspicious of a black man in a white town.

7. Lol, oh heavens no, no, lol

8. Hahaha, hell no. Even just me, the treatment has been night and day from my long haired youth to my career man self now. Cops are trash, I’ll never forget.

9. Cops are notorious in the US for discriminating as I’m sure all cops around the world can be.

   Also I live in the south now and I have a ***very*** thick NY accent. I get treated differently for it by cops and everyone around here in general.

10. There are more than 600,000 cops in over 18,000 different departments in the USA.

    There are going to be some assholes that do not treat everyone equally. Some will discriminate for various reasons – age, race, appearance, accent, gender, class, north vs south, city vs rural and other things.

11. NO!

12. Fuck no

13. Cops are people, some people treat other people differently based on race

14. No, in fact police are well documented treating minorities differently. Hell my brother was training to be a cop and was being trained to treat minorities, particularly black people as hostile suspects regardless of who or what they done. Hell a lot of coos aren’t even good people. Hell plenty of FBI indicates white supremist and alt right groups have successfully infiltrated police forces throughout the country. Hell it’s not that hard, there was an gearing up to be on the force cop, former state trooper, from VA who literally catfished a minor in CA and killed her family before kidnapping her and dying in a shootout with police just this past Thanksgiving weekend. Somehow he never managed to throw up any red flags.

15. Some police definitely do not

16. There’s no consensus answer to this. It goes on a case-by-case basis.

    It depends on state and how rural / urban it is.

    I don’t think any cops near here discriminate because of race or accent, but I’m moderately light skinned and have no discernible accent so I don’t know for sure.