Racial
Profiling
A Practical Consensus
By C.W Wyatt
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In 1968, the Supreme Court ruled that it’s not a violation
of the 4th Amendment to detain and search a man for a weapon in
absence of a search warrant; so long as the officer acts upon a
reasonable belief based upon objective
factors that the man is armed and dangerous (This is obviously
subjective).
The criminal justice community refers to such stop and frisk
encounters as "Terry" stops. Over the years terry stops
have been used with increasing frequency to stop and
investigate suspicious characters
Law enforcement agencies all over the country favor
pre-textual stops and encounters with citizens as good
proactive policing. The practices are most often deployed
through a casual traffic stop occasioned by a burned out
taillight or some other minor vehicle code violation.
On the face of it, Terry stops seem like good common sense
practice.
But problems arose, when it was revealed that
Terry stops were used primarily to detain and
interrogate minorities. In late 1999, the New Jersey state police
admitted to
the stop and detention of disproportionate numbers of
black men.
Terry stops of minorities came to be known as
racial profiling. Racial profiling
refers to government activity directed at a suspect or group of
suspects because of their race, whether intentional or because
of the disproportionate numbers of contacts based upon other
pre-textual reasons.
Racial profiling is controversial
because race is controversial. Every
minority stop and frisk encounter always raises the
question in the minority mind, “Why am I being stopped?”
"Recent studies at the University of Washington in
Seattle found that people hold unconscious biases,
even when they believe they do
not.
More than 4.5M
people have taken the University's online test, which asks
them to indicate positive or negative feeings about
pictures and words that appear on the computer
screen.
Test takers are
often shocked to learn that while they think they hold no biaes toward
blacks, multiculturalism or fat people, something different
is going on in their heads."
(Quoted from USA Today
12/12/07 page 11a)
Wide spread prejudice runs deep and silent, in all
humans! Racial profiling creates doubt, confusion,
and resentment because nobody knows if an
officer's pre-textual
perceptions are biased (perhaps, not even the
officer).
So the question arises, How do we as a free and democratic
society handle racial profiling.
This is a particularly thorny question because of our
enormous illegal immigrant population and the 9/11 attacks.
For example, everybody knows that the 9/11 criminals were
Muslims, or more specifically militant Muslims.
No subject is more controversial right now than racial or
ethnic profiling. Paying special attention to passengers of
Middle East descent can get an airline in trouble. Pull more
than two such passengers aside per flight for special scrutiny,
and an airline risks a lawsuit.
But captured al Qaeda documents show that Arab men are
probing for weaknesses in U.S. security.
Los Angeles Times editor Michael Kinsley observed: "Today
we're at war with a terror network that killed [3,000]
innocents and has anonymous agents in our country planning more
slaughter. Are we really supposed to
ignore the one obvious, identifiable fact we
know about them?"
What good is subjecting Grandma to a wand search and even a
pat-down search when all nineteen terrorists were men of
Middle Eastern descent between the ages of twenty and
forty-five. A search of Grandma is likely to do nothing to
thwart Muslim criminals.
Even worse, the time and effort spent patting down Grandma
may be a waste of time that could be better used screening more
likely candidates.
It should be noted, that the Israeli airline El Al has a
policy of singling out young Arabs for extensive search
procedures. But in spite of ongoing war in the middle east, it
has not had a hijacking in over thirty years.
The same logic applies to illegal immigrants. Is law
enforcement supposed to ignore all latinos on the off chance
that the one stopped might be legal?
So, the question persists, How do we as a free and
democratic society handle Terry stops, a.k.a., racial
profiling, ethnic profiling?
First, we
must realize that racial profiling can become a
weakness.
Terrorists could keep dark complexioned members in
background roles, and lighter skinned people in visible roles
to actually carry out the terrorism. To further evade racial
profiling, such a group could be heavily comprised of
women.
The profiling markers of nationality, race and religion can
be manipulated to render a false profile. We all recall the
D.C. snipers who were black men. But the Profile indicated they
would be white men.
Second, we’re
just going to have to learn to trust one
another.
Terry stops a.k.a. racial profiling, make sense, even
when used by flawed human beings. The alternative is to
make law enforcement too tentative to be
effective. This means in
practice that there will be racially
motivated stops by certain bigoted
police.
Still, we must be vigilant; otherwise law enforcement
could routinely abuse our trust.
Vigilance means holding people legally
accountable. There's a unique service (recommended by
television journalist Tony Brown) that provides 24-hour access
to an attorney if you're ever detained or arrested.
Any minority detained in a Terry stop can
politely request to immediately contact their attorney, on
a cellphone in the presence of the officer.
While not a guarantee of anything, contacting
an attorney (while being held) in the
presence of law enforcement helps them and you consider,
if the detention is not only legal, but righteous.
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