Recent events have sparked outrage over the concept of citizen’s arrest and its often racist connotation. A citizen’s arrest is when a non-law enforcement individual arrests someone who they believe has broken the law. Clearly, this can be a complicated idea with room for interpretation.
The recent citizen’s arrest and shooting of an African American man named Ahmaud Arbery on February 23 has received lots of controversial news coverage. In a neighborhood with several reported break-ins, former police officer Gregory McMichael and his son Travis McMichael decided to perform a citizen’s arrest on a man they believed to be responsible for the break-ins. However, what the two men did cannot even be classified as an actual citizen’s arrest, because they missed two important details: you must be a witness to a crime to perform a citizen’s arrest, and you shouldn’t use any sort of deadly force unless in self-defense. The two confronted Arbery while he was on a jog and threatened him with a gun. After a physical struggle, Arbery, an unarmed man, was shot and killed.
Racial profiling refers to the discriminatory practice of targeting individuals for suspicion of crime based on the individual’s race, ethnicity, religion, or national origin. Newspapers like The New York Times and USA Today have said the Ahmaud case was an example of racial profiling as his assailants suspected him for a crime he did not commit simply because of his race. Racial profiling is alive and well in America. People of color are stopped by police or wrongfully accused of committing crimes at a much higher rate than white people. In New York City, 88 percent of police stops in 2018 involved black and Latinx people, while only ten percent involved white people. Of those who were stopped, 70 percent were completely innocent (New York Civil Liberties Union).
Students at Ithaca High School have expressed outrage over the event. Dozens of students posted about it on social media outlets, like Instagram and Twitter. The men responsible for Arbery’s death were eventually tried and found guilty. However, before they were even arrested, two prosecutors recused themselves from the case, believing there wasn’t sufficient cause to arrest the men. Two months after the attack, no action had been taken. On May 5, the criminal defense attorney for the suspects leaked a graphic video of the attack, and the internet exploded. The McMichaels were arrested on May 7 and were subsequently charged with murder and aggravated assault. Two weeks later, William Bryan, the man who filmed the encounter, was arrested for his participation in the shooting.
An uplifting view of these recent events is that peoples’ voices are being heard. Other controversial events of racial profiling have been brought to light because of protesters urging the law system to reconsider their practices. May 8 would have been Ahmaud Arbery’s 26th birthday, and many Americans are fighting to prevent future racial profiling in his name.