Stop And Search Me

Very well produced piece. Check out this pod: http://current.com/items/90942192_through-stills-of-life-the-annenberg-space-for...

Really enjoyed it !!!

This was scorching! Well done mate

Great pod! Really like the light hearted take on something that a fair few of my mates have had trouble with.

Love the guy going "yeah i got stopped..........I had like two bits of weed on me..."

V funny.

but why?

haha, great pod man, real interesting

I found this pod extremely interesting. The numbers and general attitudes of people show that there is certainly something going on between police officers and black individuals. I feel, though, that it is a bit more complicated than color.

I think the police officer that was talking about body language was on the right path. It is undeniable that people can read other people. This is true of all professions that deal with individuals. Therapists can tell when someone is depressed, nurses can tell when someone is sick, teachers can tell when their students have not done an assigned reading, and police officers can tell when someone is uneasy around them. I have a criminal justice professor, who is also a cop, at Michigan State University that calls this his “spidey sense.” In other words, because cops do what they do, they have a heightened sense of individuals and situations. They can usually tell when something is off.

The second part of the story comes from culture. According to some statistics, in the United States, 75% of African Americans believe that cops treat blacks worse than whites. Only 23% of white people felt this way. It is clear that a general distrust of police and authority figures exists within black culture. This is a result of hundreds of years of socialization perpetuated in the modern era through the media. Crime is over reported, and the majority of the people represented in the media are black. This is on top of countless police-brutality incidents like Rodney King. And in general, a judicial system that focuses on minority crime, like drug use, more heavily than white crime and is therefore responsible for many families and lives to being interrupted.

So, knowing that blacks, in general, have distrust for police, and that police can usually sense when someone is uneasy around them, it is not surprising that more black individuals are stopped and searched. It is not that the police officer is racist, color is only indirectly related to the phenomenon. This explains why there are so many exceptions. The white kid that was hanging out with the street crew said he was harassed just as much as any black kid because he was part of the culture that generally distrusts the police. The individual who made the pod obviously does not feel uneasy around the police, and therefore was not and usually is not bothered by them. And especially at the end, when they were trying to get attention, it is clear that they have nothing to hide, otherwise…why would they be filming and shouting at the police.

In essence, it is the way you behave toward police officers that influence the way they behave toward you. In most cases your behavior is, at this level, subconscious and bound by your individual socialization. Yet, the police officer can still pick up on this, and act accordingly.

I can't believe nobody has mentioned the obvious problem with this pod! If you're aim is to test the statistics of racial profiling, you need to simulate real-world conditions. Having a hulking beast of a camera pointed at your alleged 'victim' does not achieve this. You even took care to keep a shot in the pod so we could see the size of the camera!

Almost all people -- authority figures or not -- alter their behavior when they know they're being filmed. If you had opted to docment this experiment this in a less obvious manner (like using a smaller, even covert camera) i imagine the outcome would be much different than what was recorded.

As it is, this pod serves only to prove that if you've got a mate with a large camera tagging along the police will not suspect you of anything besides being a documentary filmmaker.

this was great! i loved the ending.

That was tight mate. Don't think the results would be the same in the U.S. British cops seem nice, lol.
Yeah, I've had a few friends get stopped w/o reasonable suspicion in Orlando and St. Cloud. In one instance the cop went as far as claiming that she had found traces of drugs after he conceded to a search. Which was bull shi!
Im moving to England.

haha this was so great. interesting yet humorous. big ups

THAT WAS GREAT NICK, MAYBE IF THEY DO THAT N THE US IT WILL SLOW DOWN THE CRIMES.

Excellent film, very funny and sweet! Sayi make more films!

It was quite daring... but more humourous!

I would love to know the track/artist playing when yall were in the car.. Please!

the first story i've seen of this kind....refreshing to see someone take another angle....the world isn't always as horrible as we expect.

well that's what they get for doing nothing, maybe they should do something.

So, are you saying the assertion is false? Or, if it was true, seems justified by what you guys were doing. You know, taunting and loud music.