A grand jury's recent decision to not indict New York State police officer David Pantaleo in the Eric Garner chokehold case has elicited many responses - one of them being the new hashtag #CrimingWhileWhite on Twitter. According to NPR, the Twitter conversation gained popularity this past Wednesday evening, and discusses the idea that police treat people differently based on their race.

Users of the hashtag utilized it to describe their own strangely peaceful encounters with the police, and others discussed how those incidents differed from their own experiences. Recent hashtags concerning race issues have been around before, including #BlackLivesMatter and #HandsUpDontShoot. However, #CrimingWhileWhite is somewhat different in that it zeroes in on white privilege directly.

Here are some example tweets taken from the Huffington Post: "Arrested for DUI, cop took me to drive through ATM so I'd have money to bail myself out. #CrimingWhileWhite;" "Played with realistic toy guns my entire childhood, wherever we wanted. #CrimingWhileWhite;" and "This #CrimingWhileWhite hashtag. Are white ppl openly acknowledging white privilege on police interactions or am I dreaming?"

TIME reports that Jason Ross, a writer for "The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon," has been credited for starting the hashtag and pushing people to share their stories. As of now, the hashtag has been used in more than 225,000 tweets between Wednesday afternoon and Thursday morning.

According to Mic, the police kill white people much less often than they kill black people when population numbers are taken into account. Furthermore, police officers are far less likely to be given felony charges than civilians for the same crimes because the criminal justice system defers to law enforcement's "reasonable belief" they are facing danger. 

Hopefully, the creation of #CrimingWhileWhite will help to support what many people in the black community have been arguing since the deaths of Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, and Eric Garner - the justice system undeniably treats black and white people differently.