I think you and he are arguing past one another BG. He seems to be saying that the number of crimes are greater for certain races in certain specific localitites, not overall.
O.K… If 80% of the population is a minority in a certain area and 80% of the people stopped are (is?) a minority, then this is not a case of racial profiling. This is a case of the stop and search breaking down according to demographics.
What the State Police in New Jersey are accused of is creating a list of characteristics and using this list as a reason for stopping and searching innocent people and their property.
Are there other definitions of racial profiling that we are debating here? I’m not being sarcastic, I need to know what I’m debating.
“Reasonable ways to combat racial profiling”.
I consider the term “racial profiling” to be a discovered fad in social justice, and it grates on me because of the shrill way it is used to suggest institutional racism where little exists. Frankly, the East Precinct is a model of community outreach and has a well integrated force. C’mon, we pioneered bicycle patrols, for heaven’s sake.
Nonetheless a community group had a march from the Community College to the Precinct house (three blocks) and presented their ideas to the public affairs officer. Here are their suggestions:
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Requiring police to undergo yearly “anti-racist” training and to report the reason for each stop they make and the race of the people stopped.
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Installing video cameras in police units dispatched to areas where there are many complaints of police brutality.
3. Establishing “a swift and clear discipline process” for officers who target people because of their race. -
Giving people who are stopped by police report cards to fill out if they feel they’ve been unfairly targeted or treated in an unprofessional manner.
5. Establishing a place other than a police station for the complaints to be filed. -
Starting an “economic-empowerment program” to help poor people pay for the minor car repairs such as broken tail lights or missing lights on license plates that sometimes result in police stops.
Well, we’re not going to pay for broken taillights, as we’re not doing “tallight profiling”. There are already video cameras in most highway patrol units, but I have to laugh at the idea of “how’s my busting” cards. I’ve never been happy at a traffic stop, how about you? As for racial sensitivity training, I’m all for it.
The first item is redundant; this demand appeared two months AFTER the City Council and Mayor announced a study was to be held to record the (perceived) race of everybody stopped for traffic violations, along with data on whether the stop resulted in a search, an arrest, and what reason was given for the stop. Why this sudden initiative to analyze racial components of police work? Not because of public outcry, but a study last year showed that minorities received a disproportionate percentage of turn-signal citations. That study wasn’t complete enough; it showed only citations, not stops. In addition, it didn’t show any of the secondary citations that may have accompanied the turn-signal citation. Often, a minor cite is a warning if there’s nothing else wrong. If there is a major citation issued, the minor cite has to be written up because it might have been used as the reason for the stop.
The data to be collected has to be voted on by the City Council, and the study will run for a year. All very considered, all very polite.
That’s a far cry from the “Racial profiling is a rampant evil and we will stamp it out immediately” approach that some folks seem to want to take. ML King III asked at a rally for an executive order, for heaven’s sake.
Following the ugly New Jersey case, our State Patrol did a little quick review and found that the stop rates are almost identical to the population’s ratios. However, the citation and arrest rates are higher for minorities. Lends credence either to the “White Guy Get Out Of Jail Free Card” or “race=criminality” theory, depending on which side you’re on I suppose.
It seems clear to me that the way to make justice more fair is to analyze data realistically, not to go looking for the stats you want. The problem in New Jersey was threefold; a racist barracks, a anti-drug slant that targeted blacks, and a Patrol commander who hid the evidence when it came up. Of those three, the last is the easiest to fight.
This doesn’t have to do with racial profiling per se–but: Does profiling have value as a law enforcement tool?
Hasn’t every serial killer profiled been a white male, aged 20-45? Isn’t this usually on time? I can think of only one black serial killer (Williams in Atlanta) or female (that prostitute in Florida?.). Maybe there are others examples, but don’t most fit the Gacy-Dahmer profile? These could be bad examples.
But doesn’t the FBI have a whole division dedicated to profiling serial killers (ala “Silence of the Lambs”)?
And if the superstar cops of the FBI use this “tool”; why not the dumbshit state troopers who want some glory fighting crime?
Racial profiling varies from race to race, depending upon the area.
I have no problem with it. I’ve been stopped in certain areas because I’m white and don’t drive a new car and I’m suspect for either wanting to buy drugs or casing an area for potential B & E. In one section of my town, where the real rich live, theft and burglary usually are committed by white males. Vandalism is usually committed by white males. In the small minority community, late at night, white males and females cruising through the area are usually looking for drugs, which seem to be sold every 40 feet or so.
I get stopped in both places if I drive through there at night. Big deal.
If statistics state that a person of X color in a certain area has a higher percentage of committing a crime than other local races, profiling is bound to happen. Big deal. Profiling happens because something causes it to happen.
In some places I’ve lived, the police have been forced to operate in pairs in X neighborhoods because of the crime rates and open defiance of the cops. Frequently, when a local was arrested for committing a crime against another local, neighbors caused problems with the cops who were there protecting their right to live in a crime free area. The cops were of the same race as the locals. Profiling is done a lot in that area, for obvious reasons.
As for there not being ‘enough of you,’ when you take the averages of crimes committed per race, the black population still comes out with the highest rate. One of the more interesting figures shows that black on black crime is higher that white on white or black on white or white on black.
If the figures bother you, so what? We whites get to live with having the highest number of serial killers and child molesters. Big deal.
For ages, white males had the highest rate of suicide, but current figures are showing that this is increasing among black males.
A police officer has to face every one of every color and there are folks out there from age 12 who have no problems with shooting a cop. If profiling helps keep the cops alive, then fine. Let it piss off those being profiled all they want, at least the officer remains alive.
BTW, the answer to my previous post question is: white rednecks.
Around here, the cops stop them a lot, for good reason.
Does no one pay attention to my previous post? Even if crime rates are lower for minorities, racial profiling can make it appear that they commit more crimes. Police should investigate those they suspect of specific crimes, not someone that fits their own stereotype of a criminal. In cases where profiling is used in serial murders, it is used to build a specific profile for a certain crime. If details lead the police to believe a certain crime was committed by a blond atheist with issues concerning his mother, they should try to find that individual, not investigating all blond atheists to see if they committed any crimes lately. I imagine the police may find a few have committed crimes. Such a finding does not justify the police harrassing people who have not committed any crimes.
Racial Profiling is tempting because it is easy. Most criminals don’t wear tee shirts that say “I am about to commit a felony.” Police want some easy thing to use to find the bad guys. It is possible that minorities do have a higher crime rate. We won’t know they do until police abandon Racial Profiling.
Here is proof of the inefficacy of racial profiling
Before Ray Kelly took over the post as head of US Customs, the person most likely to be stopped and searched ina and airport was a Black woman. This is despite that they found over 70% of contraband overall from searching White people. AS a result there were a lot of intrusive searches, but few arrests and contraband confiscated. Ray Kelly ordered searches to be made based on observation of the person, rather than race, and to be very sure about it. As a result, while he is there, the US Customs made fewer searches, but more arrests and contraband confiscated.
Capacitator,
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It is misleading to compare the “person most likely to be stopped” with the overall percentage of countraband found. Black woman are a vey small percentage of the population. Suppose they are 6% of the population and are 15% of the stops and 15% of the countraband. And suppose Whites (which in government statistics frenquently includes Hispanics) are 85% of the population and only 70% of the stops, and 70% of the countraband. All your figures would hold, but the additional stops of black women would still be justified. (Perhaps you might wish to provide additional clarification about your statistics).
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Could you confirm that more countraband is being discovered, as opposed to a higher percentage of stops resulting in a discovery? Anytime searches are decreased, it is likely that the percentage of discoveries will increase, as the focus will be more heavily on the most blatent cases.
IzzyR,
The report that I saw showed specific stats for Ohare stops. One security guard or what ever they are called had the highest number of body cavity searches, all of which were performed on black women and none of whom were ever found to be carrying any contraband. Nasty business.
lee,
If you have any specific stats, let’s have them. But to extrapolate from one security guard to all law enforcement personel is about as logical as extrapolating from one black person to all of them.
Daaamn!
Good one. Ouch!
lee’s anecdote proves that racial profiling exists.
I personally think we’re off-base in chasing statistics. Statistical evidence that 90% of black women in airports carry contraband is not sound legal cause to search all black women.
We’re bogging down in statistics and probability of whether members of particular races, or owning particular types of cars justifies profiling, etc.
All these arguments assume that efficiency is the primary issue in law enforcement and crime-prevention. And, of course, it ain’t. Hell, if efficiency were key, we wouldn’t have the 4th Amendment, or the “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard or, to push to extremes, trials.
A very long time ago, we (this society) made a choice. We decided that our values mandate that we subject ourselves to a greater risk of crime so that our freedoms would not be infringed. “Better a thousand guilty men go free than one innocent man be punished.”
So, guess what: if the police were able to create the perfect profile, whether race was part of that profile or not, it should not be used unless a specific crime has been committed and the police are investigating that specific crime. Suspicion that a previously unknown crime has been committed is not a good reason for pulling anyone over, regardless of race.
The end result of my theory is that the police will have to ignore people that they “know” committed a crime, and that you and I bear an increased risk of being victims of crime. That is part of the price we pay for liberty. That is a price that I am willing to pay and, given the result were this not in place, I believe that most Americans are willing to pay if they thought it through.
Sua
SuaSponte
Yes. Matter of fact, this was the specific issue brought up in the OP.
There is a trade-off between efficiency and freedom. Neither one can entirely trump the other. Your claim that “Better a thousand guilty men go free than one innocent man be punished” is astonishing, and likely, not thought out. I have no doubt that the number of innocent people punished under our present criminal justice system is higher than one in a thousand and would be so under any other conceivable system. The only way to completely avoid punishing innocent people would be to punish no one at all.
This brings up another issue. Are you unwilling to distinguish between arresting (punishing) and merely pulling someone over? Can there be no category of “investigation” or “crime prevention” which is not considered punishment in itself? What is your position on police at the border searching people’s cars or luggage for smuggling? What about searching people’s luggage before entering an airplane? What about the IRS requiring people to file tax returns containing personal financial information (and in some cases auditing) without the slightest evidence of any crime (i.e. non-payment of taxes) being committed?
I think the opposite is true. Even many Americans who might think they are willing to pay this price are unfamiliar with the practical aspects of law enforcement, and have no idea of what the consequences of stretching these principles to such extreme levels would be. As I’ve mentioned, there is an inevitable trade-off between freedom and security, and I do believe that some security must be traded off for freedom. But that absolutist position that you are adopting has not been accepted by the majority of Americans, and hopefully never will be.
KellyM
[quote]
lee’s anecdote proves that racial profiling exists**It also proves that O’Hare airport exists - very useful information for someone traveling to Chicago. Thanks for pointing that out.
Actually, it’s a rather famous quote. I put it in quotations, but did not attribute it, because I’ve forgotten who said it. I will investigate and report back.
And, BTW, it is well thought out on my part. My personal moral and ethical beliefs hold that the damage to society is greater if innocents are wrongly convicted than if guilty people go free.
But the goal and ideal of our criminal justice system is to avoid at almost any cost the punishment of innocents. In some jurisdictions, “beyond a reasonable doubt” is defined as a “moral certainty” the defendant is guilty. You are right that we as humans can’t reach this ideal. It doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try.
The “absolutist” position I am adopting is enshrined in our laws. Even if we take race out of the equation, profiling of any kind is illegal. Not immoral or unethical according to my beliefs, but illegal under the Constitution and the laws of the several states. Police officers cannot pull over cars because they believe (even reasonably) the driver may have committed an unspecified crime. That is why there is always a pretext for the pull-over, be it failure to signal a lane change, or a sobriety checkpoint, etc.
If you look at the safeguards imposed by the 4th, 5th, and 6th Amendments, we make massive trade-offs in favor of liberty over efficiency even when we know a particular crime has been convicted, and when we’re pretty damn sure who did it. What I am saying, and what the law demands, is that we don’t even allow those trade-offs when the police do not have knowledge that a crime has occurred.
- Arresting v. pulling someone over. Under law, in both case, the person is considered taken into custody. The police have control over you, and you are not free to go on about your business in peace. The only difference is the amount of time involved.
- Every category of “investigation” and “crime prevention” involve the power of the state being applied against its citizens. They are not punishment, but they are an interference with the citizen’s liberty interest. As such, we have strong safeguards in place to prevent the abuse of this state power. The most important of these are reasonableness and probable cause. Again, a particular crime must have occurred.
This isn’t a wild fantasy of mine. In a Supreme Court case last month, the Supremes forbade an Indiana police department from walking a drug-sniffing dog around cars stopped at checkpoints (IIRC, they were sobriety checkpoints). There was almost no additional interference here - the cars were already (legitimately) stopped. It is still declared unconstitutional. - Border stops. Many of our constitutional safeguards do not apply at the border. I used to know the reason with particularity, but I’ve forgotten. My best recollection is that particular constitutional powers awarded to the federal government are in play in controlling our borders, and these enumerated powers trump the safeguards. I have no problem with that.
- Airports. It’s a bit of a nuance, but Congress governs interstate travel under the Commerce Clause, and luggage checks are intended to fulfill a public safety function, not a criminal investigation function. Any arrests that come out of it are incidental to the public safety function, not the intent of the searches. This is the same rationale that allows sobriety checkpoints. I have some problems with this rationale as applied, as it is easily abused, but not to the rationale itself.
- Tax returns. The income tax is governed by the 16th Amendment, and as such, has been adopted and accepted by our society in compliance with the rules under which we live. Importantly, the IRS is not allowed to turn over information it obtains to other law enforcement agencies.
As for criminal investigations by the IRS itself, this is a variation of the public safety function. The IRS is performing the constitutionally-mandated function of collecting taxes, and any crimes uncovered are incident to performing that function. Again, it can be abused, but the rationale itself is permissible.
Sua
“particular crime has been committed”
Okay, so the police should do as good a job as possible to profile the guilty. But you’ve accepted that, due to human imperfection, sometimes the innocent must be inconvenienced or suffer so that society may properly function. Same goes for profiling.
Source please. (By your reckoning, a sobriety checkpoint should itself be unconstitutional).
I’m unclear as to why you are willing to write off those inconveniences that are needed due to public safety or IRS functioning, but not those that are due to crime-fighting necessities. IMHO, letting a thousand guilty criminals evade detection because of civil liberties constraints, with the accompanying increase in crime, is about as big of a public safety issue as you can get.
The same most assuredly does not go for profiling. We are talking about two separate issues here. The first is arrest and trial, where a definite crime has shown to have been committed, and we are trying to assign blame. The second is profiling, where the police have no evidence that any crime has been committed, but, because of the characteristics of the class of persons to whom the individual driver belongs, believe that driver may have committed some previously unknown crime at some unknown point. The two are apples and oranges.
The source is the 4th Amendment. Under the Fourth Amendment, “a search or seizure is ordinarily unreasonable in the absence of individualized suspicion of wrongdoing.” Indianapolis v. Edmond, 121 S.Ct. 447, 451 (2000)(citing Chandler v. Miller, 520 U.S. 305, 308 (1997)(emphasis added). A stop based upon a profile is suspicion of a class of persons, not an individual, and is thus unconstitutional.
The Supreme Court has held that the individualized suspicion is not necessary in those limited circumstances where the search program was designed to serve “special needs, beyond the normal need for law enforcement.” Id (emphasis added). See, e.g., Veronia School Dist. 47J v. Acton, 515 U.S. 646 (1995)(random drug testing of student athletes.)
While I am not in complete agreement with the rationale, I accept it. The important this is that law enforcement isn’t the point of the suspicionless searches.
The Supreme Court disagrees with you. It considers crime control a different issue than public safety, and holds that crime control efforts must comply with the 4th Amendment. I will now quote extensively from Indianapolis v. Edmond, 121 S.Ct. 447 (2000). (further down, the court will address the very point of crime as a public safety issue.)
The facts were as follows:
“In August 1998, the city of Indianapolis began to operate vehicle checkpoints on Indianapolis roads in an effort to interdict unlawful drugs. The city conducted six such roadblocks between August and November that year, stopping 1,161 vehicles and arresting 104 motorists. Fifty-five arrests were for drug-related crimes, while 49 were for offenses unrelated to drugs …
At each checkpoint location, the police stop a predetermined number of vehicles … Pursuant to written directives issued by the chief of police, at least one officer approaches the vehicle, advises the driver that he or she is being stopped briefly at a drug checkpoint, and asks the driver to produce a license and registration. The officer also looks for signs of impairment and conducts and open-view examination of the vehicle from the outside. A narcotics-detection dog walks around the outside of the stopped vehicle.”
The Indianapolis instituted several safeguards in an attempt to pass constitutional muster. These included:
- They may conduct a search only by consent or based upon the particularized suspicion.
- The officer must conduct each stop in exactly the same manner until a particularized suspicion develops.
- The officers had no discretion to stop any vehicle out of sequence.
- The stops were conducted in such a manner that, unless reasonable suspicion or probable cause developed, they would last five minutes or less.
These drug checkpoints were declared unconstitutional.
First, the Supremes noted that a vehicle stop at a highway checkpoint “effectuates a seizure within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment.” Id. at 453. The Supremes also acknowledged that the dog-sniff does not constitute a search Id. The Supremes found that the drug checkpoints were different that other checkpoints which pass constitutional muster “because the primary purpose of the Indianapolis narcotics checkpoint program was to uncover evidence of ordinary criminal wrongdoing, the program contravenes the Fourth Amendment.” Id. at 454.
The Court acknowledged that “traffic in illegal narcotics creates social harms of the first magnitude … But the gravity of the threat alone cannot be dispositive of questions concerning what means law enforcement officers may employ to pursue a given purpose.” Id. at 454-55.
You get the idea. While the seizures here were mild, pretty unintrusive (5 minutes or less), and decently effective (9% of those stopped were arrested), they were unconstitutional. Our ideals are considered more important than efficiency in crime control.
Sua
Sabbath bump for IzzyR
I can surely understand that they are different, but I don’t see how they are different with regards to the principle of “better that a thousand guilty men should go free than that one innocent person be punished”. If in our criminal justice system we do not operate under this principle, I don’t see why this must suddenly become our guiding principle when it comes to stop-and-search operations.
It certainly seems like you are right about the Supreme Court, based on the facts that you’ve presented. I was not aware of this issue previously, so I’m grateful for your researching the matter.
Nonetheless, leaving aside constitutional issues, it does seem odd to make a distinction between “the normal need for law enforcement” and other matters. You yourself seem a bit unhappy with the distinction. The difference between us being that you would likely not make exceptions even for “special needs”, whereas I would not apply this principle to even ordinary law enforcement. So I guess for issues of deciding what is or is not permitted under the constitution I’ll defer to SC, and confine my opinions to what should be permitted (or what would be if I were writing the constitution). But we would also disagree if the SC ruled on profiling and came up with some equally forced reason to allow it in these cases. From my perspective I’d feel that at least the common sense approach is prevailing in these circumstances, and you would feel important constitutional rights are being trampled on.