It is no surprise that for over several years that the police have been targeting African Americans for over several decades just by the appearance of there on their skin. This automatically makes them walking targets for law enforcement and as criminal symbols in the news media. Not too long ago, CNN released a video of the police threating to shoot a black woman who is pregnant with her two daughters. It all started when the woman’s daughter was reported for allegedly stealing a doll from the dollar store. Soon after the woman and her kids leave the store, she pulled into an apartment complex to drop her daughter off at a babysitter. Then an officer began banging against their window, yelling and threatening to kill them. Even though the woman said that her hands are up, and she does not want to get shot, the police were determined to open fire on the woman her kids and her husband. one officer can be seen handcuffing her husband, first on the ground and then against a police car. The officer kicks Ames and can be heard yelling multiple times, “When I tell you to do something, you f****** do it” (Maxouris & Silverman, CNN). The situation soon gets only worse when “another officer appears to be pulling a gun on the passenger side of the couple’s vehicle before Harper exits the car, holding a small child, with a second child by her side. An officer is seen attempting to yank the child from her arms before a bystander offers to take her children” (Maxouris & Silverman, CNN). Obviously, this situation was treated completely treated as a hate crime for only thinking as African Americans as criminals who should be dealt with immediately on the spot. Gail Garfield “focuses on the ways African Americans were portrayed in media accounts and the actions taken by government officials in response to those portrayals, as it examines how “man-made” events created the perception of unworthy disaster victims” (Garfield, p.4)”. Their identity is objectified as nothing but gun holders, rapist and out of control thugs.
Garfield, Gail. Hurricane Katrina: The Making of Unworthy Disaster Victims. Copyright of Springer
Science + Business Media, LLC 2007, 9 August 2007, 21, June 2019.
Christina Maxouris and Hollie Silverman, Parents say police pulled guns on them after 4-year-old
daughter took a doll from a store in Phoenix. Copyright of CNN. Sat June 15, 2019, Fri June 21, 2019.
https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/15/us/phoenix-police-investigation-shoplifting-incident/index.html
media analysis 