“Dear Editor,

My name is Jeannette Douglas, I’m a student at Fordham University Graduate School of Social Service. I’m currently working on a group project about racial profiling in New York City and kindly asking for your assistance with publishing this letter in The Observer, with the hope to further increase public awareness in regards to this issue.

Racial profiling has been an ongoing problem for minorities such as African American, Hispanic and Muslim population in this country. African Americans mostly encounter this difficulty, and this dilemma is occurring all across the United States. For many years, people who are affected by this problem have called out for help, but until now there’s no real change.

The purpose of our group project is to take a stance against racial profiling with the intent to have the police department include mandatory cultural and racial sensitivity training. Public servants in the field of law enforcement play an important role within our communities. Therefore, integrating cultural and racial competency training would help to improve the quality of service received by racially diverse communities from law enforcement.

The goal of this training is to get law enforcers to confront their underlying prejudices and stereotypical perspectives, and change the way they do their jobs. The training would help them to reexamine their perceptions and reactions to people who are different. This training should be made mandatory for the policy academy and also in the in-service training. Advocating for the mandatory implementation of this training could achieve the positive outcome of what’s expected of law enforcement in our neighborhoods, which is to serve our communities and help people.

We want to continue to raise awareness on this issue, and point out that racial profiling is an overwhelming major problem, and more controversial than ever. As people of this country and as a society, we need to make this topic important to everyone, and try to end this form of discrimination. As humans, we need to leave behind judgments and indifferences and join in unity as a country.

Please assist us in our advocacy to raise awareness and promote mandatory cultural and racial sensitivity training for law enforcement in our New York City neighborhoods.

Please feel free to contact me at the information provided.

Looking forward to communicating with you.”

— Jeannette Douglas, student at Fordham University Graduate School of Social Service

[email protected]

917-500-6744