Name: Emmanuel Olusheki

Social Justice Group: 2018-2019, Race & Policing

Date of Fieldwork: December 12, 2018

Name of Organization: Vera: Institute of Justice

Person (people) with whom I met and their job titles: Mawia Khogali

Type of Fieldwork: Interview

What I did:

We went to the Vera building downtown to meet with Mawia Khogali for an interview. We also met Nicholas Turner, the president of VERA.

What I learned:

We learned that policing represents the beginning of the criminal justice system. The police system was originally used to enforce racism since the 1st officers were slave patrollers. We also learned that race seeps into many of the polices problems and how only about 5% of arrests are for actual crimes since people can be arrested for vagrancy which means to be homeless. We were told that America relies too heavily upon force.

What I learned about Social Justice “work” and/or Civil and Human rights “work” from this fieldwork:

Through the fieldwork, I learned that police are their own sort of social workers and that police brutality has been a problem for a very long time but it has recently gained recognition. It was less documented in the past and America still does not document incidents about police using unnecessary amounts of force.