The phrase “walking while black” is the idea that a black person walking down the street is subject to committing a crim, even though they could be simply walking to the store. Stop and frisks are practiced by many police officers targeting young men of color. A person of color could be walking down the street with a wallet or phone in their pocket and could possibly be stopped because an officer might think it could be a gun or drugs. Even if a person is walking and changed their direction, they could be seen as suspicious and stopped and frisked. It’s sad to think that blacks have to worry about if they will be stopped, questioned, and possibly frisked just for walking down the street. There was a lawsuit in Indiana when a man by the name of Carl Cooper was pulled over, handcuffed, and guns pointed at him for doing absolutely nothing wrong. Cooper believed he was racially profiled for driving through a wealthy, white populated neighborhood. Officers argued that it was a mistaken identity case and they had the wrong guy (Buckley, 2016). “Mistaken identity” cases happen way too often to be an accident. Someone had mentioned a time, years ago, she and her boyfriend, at the time, were walking around the mall when a mall cop approached them and slammed her boyfriend against the wall questioning him about stealing cd’s. Apparently a kid, who was white, had stolen …show more content…
In the case of Terry v. Ohio the Supreme Court ruled that reasonable suspicion is sufficient enough for a police officer to briefly stop and question an individual for weapons. Reasonable suspicion must not be based on off a ‘hunch’ rather than making reasonable suspicion based off experience (Feder, 2012 pg. 2). If someone is “driving while black”, the color of their skin is not reasonable suspicion to stop and question someone. However, if the driver clearly saw the officers and immediate changed his or her behavior in some way, that could be reasonable suspicion to stop and question them and search their car. Police officers could find anything and use it as reasonable suspicion just to stop and question a minority. An African American can be walking down the street and see a police officer an immediately turn and go a different direction, it is precise to say that most officers would be suspicious. However, police officers cannot use avoidance as reasonable suspicion for blacks, or anyone for that