What To Do If Stopped By The Police

For the most part, men of color do not know how to respond when stopped by the police while they are going about their daily life legally. In too many cases, a police officer will stop an innocent person for some reason or another and the person ends up arrested.

Many times, a person is arrested because the officer did not like the fact that the person they stopped is questioning the approach and appropriateness of the racial profiling. Expressing one's frustration when a police officer pulls you other and voicing displeasure is both okay and legal. However, an officer that is controlling and does not like the way you question their authority can arrest you on a number of charges. The main one seems to be the very vague disorderly conduct charges.

It would be great to see African American and Latino politicians address this issue with organizations like NAPO (National Association of Police Organizations) or IUPA (Internatonal Union Of Police Associatons)in order to come up with standards on the best ways for men of color to respond to profiling stops when they have not committed any crime.

In the meantime, the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) has developed a printable set of guidelines when racial profiling takes place. The information may not be perfect, but it gives one an idea of how to handle these situations when they are stopped by the police. Read Guidelines

The guidelines are saved as a PDF file and one would need a PDF reader which is available for free if it is not already installed on the computer being used. Here is a link to a free and popular PDF reader called Acrobat Reader - Download File