Is Police violence based upon racism?

     In many cases police violence has been a major part of racial profiling and the different stereotypes that flow into the police's thoughts. Throughout the years the police violence has decreased as for now, 2013, there's still have been a partial  number of police violence occurring in today's society. Why has that still continuing you ask?
    Well in many cases like the Rodney King story and other stories similar to King's, it has been a huge deal now because of the rebellion that started due to the injustice of the Rodney King situation. Most police officers find it okay to just go ahead and shoot a person not knowing what exactly the situation is just because of the color of their skin and the stereotypes that a race has.
    As for one of the articles by University of Denver they stated a similar case to Rodney's where a Hispanic mother calls the police for help due to her son fighting with his dad and leaving the house aggravated with a knife was a huge concerned for the mother. In which later on the mother described him and later he was found and shot Julio in which later he was pronounced dead.
  In my opinion I find it quite interesting how Paulina Valerio (mother) calling the police to help his son had anything to do with the police taking it to the next level and calling all different police units in which the situation wasn't at all that serious. My thing with this situation was that the police officers didn't really have a sense of the story that them just witnessing a hispanic boy with a knife was suspicious and harmful that they had to shoot him just because of his racial profile.
   Julio in the other hand could've had one of those moments where he raged with anger and didn't know what to do so he left his house with a knife just to scare his parents, that not even harming them he was the one falling into the victim and getting shot for no apparent reason.
    In the article of the University of Denver I found quite interesting how the author addressed how a white, middle class youth can be considered to be un-harmful, rather than a Latino youth who are classified as violent, dangerous, and of course to be endangered. "The focus of the racial lens can be measured when their existence, their brown bodies, no matter how young or small, are circumscribed dangerous, prior to any gesture, any raising of the hand to be a source of threat," said the author from the University of Denver. I find that quite racist how a person that is brown gesturing is considered to be "dangerous" but what about if a white youth was to gesture and he was more "dangerous" than the Latino? it makes no sense and it's all up to the color of your skin which is definitely injustice.


-Cristal Canedo