Different examples of power Essay

What is power? What are different examples of power? How can people gain and maintain power? Power is being able to make something happen or prevent something from happening. You know if someone has power if they are leaders or if they are respected. If you’re a good influence you can also gain power because people begin to follow in your footsteps. Examples of power are political, economic, and social. Political power is an authority held by a group within society that allows for the administration of public resources and implement policies for society. The President has political power and the governor has political power. Social power is the degree of influence that an individual or organization has among their peers and within their society as a whole. Martin Luther King had social power and Malcolm X also had social power. Economic power is organization of the money, industry, and trade of a country, region, or society. Jay Z has economic power because he has money. My essay is going to be about stop and frisk and how often it is being used by police officers and how it affects the people in neighborhoods it is constantly happening in and the statistics on the frisking. In New York City police officers have a program called stop and frisk which is when a person is stopped by a cop and patted down to examine if the person is carrying a weapon or if the person is engaging in illegal activity. This type of limited search occurs when police confront a suspicious person in an effort to prevent a crime from taking place. A stop is different from an arrest. An arrest is a lengthy process in which the suspect is taken to the police station or booked and a frisk is only a temporary search. If the officer uncovers further evidence during the frisk, the stop may lead to an actual arrest, but if no further evidence is found, the person is let go. Unlike a full search, a frisk is only limited to a patting down of the outer clothing. If the officer feels something like a weapon, the officer may then reach inside the person’s clothing. If no weapon is felt, the search may not go any further than the outer clothing. In 2011, New Yorkers were stopped by police 685,724 times by police officers and 88 percent of them were totally innocent. 34 percent were African Americans & 34 percent where Latinos. 51 percent were though age 14 to 24, only 9 percent were Caucasian.. In the first nine months of 2012, New Yorkers were stopped by police 443,422 times. 89 percent were completely innocent. 55 percent were  black and 32 percent were Latinos, 10 percent were white. Stop and frisk causes people to be afraid of the police because when they are around they have to worry about being frisked by them. â€Å"Stop-and-Frisk abuses corrode trust between the police and communities, which makes everyone less safe. I know people that get very scared when the police come around because he had been frisked a lot of times. Police officers also sometimes use physical force when frisking people. For example, if you are getting frisked and you try to resist, the police will sometimes use physical force on you because they may feel like you’re disobeying them. Stop and frisk is a violation of the Fourth Amendment. The Fourth Amendment says â€Å"people have the right to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.† Mayor Bloomberg and police say stop and frisk has helped New York reach a low crime rate. New York has the lowest crime rate among the nation’s biggest cities, said by the FBI. People call the stop and frisk practice racial discrimination. Aggressive stop-and-frisk practices are having a profound effect on individuals, groups and communities across the city. Residents of some New York City neighborhoods describe a police presence so pervasive and hostile that they feel like they are living in a state of siege. w deeply this practice impacts individuals and they document widespread civil and human rights abuses, including illegal profiling, improper arrests, inappropriate touching, sexual harassment, humiliation and violence at the hands of police officers.