Racial Profiling

[TheMoonGazer]

Since in various areas, various races are profiled, this is apparently an equal opportunity thing, and with the high rate of savage criminal activity currently going on in the States, I have no problem with it and I’ve been stopped under the profile also.

Profiling starts when cops notice that certain people commit the majority of crimes. If the shoe fits, then wear it. Like I said, when I drive in a certain couple of areas in my town, I risk getting stopped because in one, I’m probably there casing the area to do a future crime and in the other I’m probably there to buy or sell drugs. The statistics within my area have shown this.

Whites are profiled just as blacks, Hispanics just the same as American Indians, males between the ages of 14 and 25, hot cars just the same as low riders.

So long as this helps stop crime by nabbing people with illegal drugs, in stolen cars, holding guns or booze, fine. I don’t care if a few people get their feelings hurt.

When I was younger I got stopped a lot because I drove a hot car, wore my hair long and dressed in a fringed leather jacket. Now I have short hair, but like to drive my old beater around and if I wander into certain areas, I get stopped and checked because I look suspicious. I don’t care.

When I was a salesman, I kept an eye on young males, black, because we found that they had the highest rate of stealing clothing. Across the store, they kept an eye on young males, white because they had the highest rate of stealing CDs.

We caught a bunch of them this way.

Times change. You can be politically correct all you want, but until things even out, certain groups of people will commit more crimes than other groups. Profiling will go on.

I mean, we all want crime rates dropped, but then we hobble the cops. They want surveillance cameras on the streets to help cut down on crime but Joe Honest Citizen is griping about ‘big brother’ and fighting it, screaming about privacy rights. Though Joe Honest Citizen has no problem with filming his neighbor through a window across the street doing something in the privacy of his own home that Joe finds offensive.

That’s OK.

Right now, minorities have the highest crime rates. There are reasons why, but until those reasons are eradicated and the crime rates drop, profiling will happen. Don’t like it? Then figure out a good way to get the target minorities to help themselves correct the problem. Give the cops a reason to drop profiling that will help just as thoroughly from getting them shot.

You aint a cop. You don’t risk your life every day by dealing with the public.

[tomndebb]

and with the high rate of savage criminal activity currently going on in the States,

Have you been watching too much TV from Europe? Crime has been dropping steadily in the U.S. for several years and in the few areas in which it has remained steady or climbed it is not susceptible to reduction by stopping citizens on the street and asking whether they have just or are just about to commit a crime.

(Unless, of course, you were talking about the savage attacks on the Constitution launched by the Religious Right and too frequently supported by Rehnquist and Scalia–but those cannot be stopped via profiling, either.)

[KellyM]

*Originally posted by TheMoonGazer *
When I was a salesman, I kept an eye on young males, black, because we found that they had the highest rate of stealing clothing. Across the store, they kept an eye on young males, white because they had the highest rate of stealing CDs.

This is not the equivalent of racial profiling. The equivalent of racial profiling would be frisking every young male as he tries to leave the store, without any regard to whether or not any particular suspect had acted suspiciously.

I have no problem with the cops “keeping an eye on” people who are out of place or who fit a profile, and arresting them or interrogating them when they in fact engage in specific conduct which leads the police to believe that the individual is about to commit a crime or has in fact recently committed one. What I have a problem with is the police arresting (or with making “noncustodial interviews”) of people merely because they “fit a profile”, without any real reason to believe that the people arrested or interrogated have actually committed any particular crime.

[Adventurious82]

Crime is dropping in the US, but is still at unacceptable levels. Certain types of crimes, those of violence, are still much higher than when I was a kid in the 60s. I still dare not leave my car unlocked when I go in town and the incidents of shootings, at least here, have gone from something like 1 a year in 1968 to around 20 and up.

The case load for HRS has more than quadrupled since 1980.

We have a large minority community, which, in the 1970s and 80s pretty much restricted itself to knifings, fights, burglaries, weed and drunks now is a primary spot for hard drugs, frequent shootings over virtually nothing and requires increased police patrols. It started when another minority began to move into the area, originally as seasonal labor, but then remaining as job availability increased.

Crime is dropping, but it is still to darn much. The neighborhood I moved into last year has had a quiet history for over 20 years. Four houses have been robbed in the two years I’ve been here. We’ve added more officers on both the city and county police forces.

Crime still has a long way to drop.

[SuaSponte]

[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by IzzyR *
**

[quote]

Originally posted by IzzyR
I can surely understand that they [trial and profiling] 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.

I think we had a bit of cross-talking here. I acknowledged that we as humans cannot reach the ideal of perfect justice, but the “thousand/one” principle is our justice system’s guiding principle, both in the arrest phase and in the search/seizure phase. We let obviously guilty people go all the time because the police violated constitutional safeguards.

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.

I am unhappy with the distinction because I believe it has been pushed too far. But the idea behind it isn’t bad
I thought of an example in the shower this morning - Building inspections. I think these are wholly appropriate, as safety problems with a building affect considerably more people than just the owners/builders, and the owners are inviting the public (tenants) into the building for money. So, it makes sense to have the public (the government) be allowed to make sure the building is safe. And that is the demonstrable purpose of inspections, not law enforcement. Most inspections end with a list of things to be repaired, not arrests. However, the inspector is not required to blind him/herself to crimes, so if he/she comes across one, they can prosecute. This is the theory applied to sobriety checks - I think it is questionable because the result of finding violations is much more likely to be arrests than anything else, but the theory is valid - you avail yourselves of the public roads, and agree to certain restrictions in order to use them.

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.

Here’s where I need clarification - what is the “common sense” behind profiling stops? Is it common sense to pull someone over because they belong to a class of persons believed to be more likely to commit crimes, and they might have evidence of heretofore unknown crimes in their car at this very moment? To reasonably think someone has committed a crime, you must first know that a crime has been committed. Profiling stops ignore that crucial step in the analysis.

As always, Izzy, it’s good fighting with ya.

Sua
Sua

[IzzyR]

I acknowledged that we as humans cannot reach the ideal of perfect justice, but the “thousand/one” principle is our justice system’s guiding principle, both in the arrest phase and in the search/seizure phase. We let obviously guilty people go all the time because the police violated constitutional safeguards.

You also seemed to acknowledge that more than one of a thousand convicts is innocent under our present system. My analogy was that we do not say “since we can’t avoid arresting innocent people we should arrest no one at all. Better that the thousand criminals go free than that the one innocent suffer”. Instead we recognize that the implications of such a policy (of no arrests at all) outweigh the targedy that ensues from the arrests of the innocents. In this manner we are accepting a tradeoff between innocents suffering and the law enforcement needs of society. So too, when approaching the issue of profiling, we can accept a tradeoff between the inconvenience of the innocents against the law enforcement needs of society.

Here’s where I need clarification - what is the “common sense” behind profiling stops? Is it common sense to pull someone over because they belong to a class of persons believed to be more likely to commit crimes, and they might have evidence of heretofore unknown crimes in their car at this very moment? To reasonably think someone has committed a crime, you must first know that a crime has been committed. Profiling stops ignore that crucial step in the analysis.

Arrests serve a dual purpose - both punishment and deterrent. In the case of officers out looking for possible crime the major motivation, as I see it, is predominantly deterrence. By aggresively seeking out crime even where no specific crime is known to have occurred, police are making life more difficult for criminals and potential criminals. When these types of measures are barred, the illegal procedures that they seek to deter become easier and more commonplace.

As always, Izzy, it’s good fighting with ya.

Same here. And may all your showers be as productive.

[mmartin273]

i have a few questions about the whole profiling episode.

First,
How did the police come up with the traits that they use for profiling? Did they make them up? Or did they notice (from people they had arrested or stopped previously) that those people who matched certain traits were more likely to have committed a crime?
For instance, say the police arrest 100 people. 50 of these people were wearing, say, cowboy hats. Of these 50 people wearing cowboy hats, 90% of them committed a crime. Wouldn’t this lead them to believe that 90% of the people they see wearing cowboy hats had more than likely committed a crime? Seems pretty logical to me.

One other note, for those of you who say we shouldn’t profile anyone regardless of the statistics, why is it that I, as a young male, pay more for car insurance??? Pure statistics, and not based on anything I personally had done in the past.

thanks for reading this,
Mike

[SuaSponte]

*Originally posted by mmartin273 *
**i have a few questions about the whole profiling episode.

First,
How did the police come up with the traits that they use for profiling? Did they make them up? [a pretty good example about evil cowboys snipped]
One other note, for those of you who say we shouldn’t profile anyone regardless of the statistics, why is it that I, as a young male, pay more for car insurance??? Pure statistics, and not based on anything I personally had done in the past.

thanks for reading this,
Mike **

You’re welcome Mike, and welcome to the SDMB.
As for your first question, here’s one example of how profiling starts. In the 80’s, there was an explosion of arrests by N.J. state troopers on the New Jersey turnpikeof mules ferrying cocaine from Florida to New York City. Most of these mules were hispanic males, and most were driving cars with Florida tags. So N.J. state troopers started focusing on Florida cars driven by hispanic males, pulling them over whenever possible, and trying to search their cars whenever possible. The problem is (and this leads directly into your cowboy hat example) while 90% of all drug mules were hispanic males from Florida, drug mules make up maybe .5% of all hispanic males from Florida. (All statistics in the last sentence complete WAGs). So, even though you are more likely to catch a drug mule, you are even more likely to inconvenience an innocent driver.

As for your second question, it’s an issue of power. A private insurance company can use statistics to determine your insurance rate, because you have the power to not buy insurance from them, or even to not drive. When the government, through its police force, tells you to pull over, you don’t have the option to say no. It’s because the citizen cannot refuse the state that we have strong safeguards against abuse of the state’s power, in this case, the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits searches and seizures unless there exists a reasonable suspicion that the individual being searched and seized has committed a crime.

Sua