Why does racial profiling still exist

Some New York narcotics officers recently pulled over an Azusa SUV and noticed welding marks along the rain gutter on top. The occupants had raised the entire roof four inches to create a drug vault. If a car's windows don't roll all the way down, drugs may be concealed in the doors.

T he fact that hit rates for contraband tend to be equal across racial groups, even though blacks and Hispanics are searched at higher rates, suggests that the police are successfully targeting dealers, not minorities. Race may play a role in that targeting, or it may not. Most cues of trafficking are race-neutral; it may be that race often correlates with the decision to search rather than causing it. But if race does play a role in the request to search, it is a much diminished one compared with a car stop based on a courier profile.

When an officer has many independent indices of suspicion, adding his knowledge of the race of major trafficking groups to the mix is both legitimate and not overly burdensome on law-abiding minorities.

Amazingly, Attorney General Verniero acknowledges that the police merely try to maximize their hit rates in deciding whom to search, but he blames them for doing so.

But if the police were seeking to maximize their contraband yields, and the alleged "inappropriate stereotypes" were not helping them do so, presumably they would abandon those "stereotypes" and find some other set of cues—unless, of course, they were merely out to harass minorities for the thrill of it. But in that case, their hit rates would be lower for minorities than for whites, which they were not.

The bottom line is this: the New Jersey attorney general has branded the state police as racist without a scintilla of analysis for his finding. Yet New Jersey is the wave of the future, for racial profiling data-collection initiatives are sweeping the country.

At least 30 states could soon require their state police to collect racial data on all traffic stops and searches, with the stated end of eliminating "racial profiling. Virtually every major law-enforcement organization opposes these bills, because of their failure to deal with the benchmarking problem. Until someone devises an adequately sophisticated benchmark that takes into account population patterns on the roads, degrees of law-breaking, police deployment patterns, and the nuances of police decision making, stop data are as meaningless as they are politically explosive.

Attorney General John Ashcroft has encouraged these data-gathering initiatives; he should instead withhold his support, unless local proponents can prove that they will capture the complex realities of law enforcement. U nfortunately, the flurry of racial profiling analysis is not confined to the highways. It will wreak the most havoc on urban policing. Despite the racket by protesters, it is in city policing that race probably plays its least significant role, because officers have so many other cues from the environment.

In assessing whether a pedestrian is behaving suspiciously, for example, they might already know that he is at a drug corner, about which they have received numerous complaints. They know if there has been a string of burglaries in the neighborhood. As they observe him, they can assess with whom he is interacting, and how.

A New York Street Crime Unit sergeant in Queens describes having stopped white pedestrians who had immediately changed directions as soon as they saw his unmarked car or ducked into an alley or a store for eight seconds and then looked for him once they came out. The night I spoke to him, he was patrolling the nd Precinct in Woodhaven, a largely white and Hispanic neighborhood.

He had earlier questioned a white kid hanging out in front of a factory. Another night in another precinct, the sergeant saw two black kids on bikes. When they saw us, the other guy took off on his bike and threw a bag away. It was felony-weight drugs. I asked him. The only question is: are you raising my level of suspicion? Fifteen minutes after a stop, I may not even be able to tell you the color of the guy. Even car stops on city streets usually have more context than on a highway.

We won't pull them over, but our suspicion is up. We'll run their plates. If the plates don't check out, they're done. If they commit a traffic violation, we won't pull everyone out of the car yet; we'll just interview the driver. If he doesn't have paperwork, it may be a stolen car. Now everyone's coming out to be frisked.

Hard as it is to believe, criminals actually do keep turning around to look at officers, though it would seem an obvious give-away. But urban policing depends on another race-neutral strength: it is data-driven.

The greatest recent innovation in policing was New York's Compstat, the computer-generated crime analysis that allows police commanders to pinpoint their enforcement efforts, then allows top brass to hold them accountable for results.

If robberies are up in Bushwick, Brooklyn, the precinct commander will strategically deploy his officers to find the perpetrators. Will all the suspects be black? Quite likely, for so is the neighborhood. Does that mean that the officers are racist? Hardly; they are simply going where the crime is. In most high-crime neighborhoods, race is wholly irrelevant to policing, because nearly all the residents are minorities. U rban police chiefs worry about the data-collection mania as much as highway patrol commanders do.

Ed Flynn, chief of police for Virginia's Arlington County, explains why. Last year, the black community in his jurisdiction was demanding heavier drug enforcement. The residents said to us: 'Years ago, you had control over the problem. Now the kids are starting to act out again. They instituted aggressive motor-vehicle checks throughout the problem neighborhood. Cracked windshield, too-dark windows, expired tags, driving too fast?

You're getting stopped and questioned. The Arlington officers also cracked down on quality-of-life offenses like public urination, and used undercover surveillance to take out the dealers.

By the end of the summer, the department had cleaned up the crime hot spots. Community newsletters thanked the cops for breaking up the dealing. But guess what? Says Flynn: "We had also just generated a lot of data showing 'disproportionate' minority arrests. The racial profiling analysis profoundly confuses cause and effect. However much the racial profilers try to divert attention away from the facts of crime, those facts remain obdurate.

Arlington has a 10 percent black population, but robbery victims identify nearly 70 percent of their assailants as black. In , blacks in New York City were 13 times more likely than whites to commit a violent assault, according to victim reports. As long as those numbers remain unchanged, police statistics will also look disproportionate. This is the crime problem that black leaders should be shouting about. B ut the politics of racial profiling has taken over everything else.

Here again, New Jersey is a model of profiling pandering, and it foreshadows the irrationality that will beset the rest of the country.

In February , New Jersey governor Christine Todd Whitman peremptorily fired the head of the state police, Colonel Carl Williams, whose reputation for honesty had earned him the nickname "The Truth. The day before his dismissal, Williams had had the temerity to tell a newspaper reporter that minority groups dominate the cocaine and marijuana trade.

Of course, this information had constituted the heart of DEA reports for years. No matter. Whether racial profiling by police officers is a matter of perception or reality loses significance when considering the widespread public belief in its existence and subsequent liability for law enforcement agencies that encounter allegations of racial profiling The experience of the United States has been that, whether practiced or simply a perception in any given community, racial profiling beliefs contribute to minority cynicism and mistrust towards the criminal justice system.

The effects of these negative attitudes can include: [20]. The perception of racialized groups that they are being profiled must also be addressed due to the psychological impact of this belief. It is therefore imperative that steps be taken to address the concerns raised. An unwillingness to discuss community concerns about racial profiling, a denial of its existence or an unwillingness to implement measures to monitor whether it may be occurring and to prevent it, further undermines public confidence.

A vicious cycle can be created where the perception of profiling is increased by a seeming unwillingness to address the concerns. The mistrust that is created has an impact on the ability of the relevant institution to carry out its mandate, as many institutions in society rely on public confidence to function effectively.

As with any type of human interaction, not talking about racial profiling will not make the concerns go away. It will only exacerbate existing tensions. The denial of problems of this nature has been shown to have several effects. First, communities fear being rebuked and silenced if they are vocal about their concerns.

There can be a real backlash against those who speak out as they are seen to be the cause of the problem. In addition, denial of a problem can lead to the phenomenon of blaming the victim. Therefore, rather than seeing a social problem as contributed to by the existence of racial discrimination, the fault is laid squarely at the feet of the group involved.

Many inquiry participants noted that people may find it hard to believe that racial profiling occurs when it has not happened to them and expressed a hope that ordinary Ontarians who have not experienced profiling and those in a position of power would listen to and keep an open mind regarding their concerns about profiling.

An entire community cannot have the same impression and It is a widespread problem throughout many institutions, the criminal justice system, the medical system and the educational system. It is a destructive force in a diverse country like Canada, especially in large cities like Toronto.

Because I think what I have seen in the media is a sense that it is a smear job on the Toronto police and that we are trying to tie their hands, as if Black people somehow aren't offended by crime, as if we want to see criminals go free. We don't want that. We want to go free. The following states appear to require independent reasonable suspicion for dog searches: Alaska, 4 Illinois, 5 Minnesota, 6 New Hampshire, New York, 8 Pennsylvania, 9 and Washington.

TV talk show host Oprah Winfrey said she was refused buzz-in entry to a store even after seeing white women admitted and making a second attempt. After calling from a pay phone and being assured the store was in fact open, a third try failed as well New York City.

S, Congresswoman Maxine Waters said she was followed around a store and required to show her key at a hotel, unlike whites who entered before her New York City. Professional basketball player and Olympic medalist Sheryl Swoopes was kept waiting to be seated for almost an hour at a restaurant, while whites who arrived after her were seated before her Houston, Texas.

After making several purchases, they went to the cosmetics counter to redeem a coupon. A white security guard accused Hampton of shoplifting, took her shopping bag, and, without consent, searched it, emptying the bag onto the counter.

After finding the receipt for the items, he shoved the goods and the empty bag back to her. When she complained about his actions, the guard ordered them to leave, and threatened to call the police and have them forcibly removed.

Hampton eventually called her husband to the scene and the situation escalated. Supreme Court declined to hear Dillard's appeal. The store chain, based in Arkansas has also faced dozens of racial profiling lawsuits, claiming harassment and false arrest, in other states including Arkansas, Iowa, and Texas. Evidence produced in one case showed that although 16 percent of its shoppers were African American, 87 percent of the false arrest claims were made by them.

In Texas, Dillard settled and paid money to the family of an African American customer who died at a store after being beaten and hog-tied while being detained, and has also settled discrimination suits by employees in Kansas and Missouri. The Immigration and Naturalization Service has had a history of disproportionately targeting ethnic groups of color for undocumented labor violations.

Like all law enforcement, INS agents must have sufficient evidence of wrong doing to establish probable cause or reasonable suspicion to arrest or detain. They may not carry out their duties in a racially or ethnically discriminatory manner. While ethnicity or nationality are obviously critical elements in immigration violations by themselves, without additional facts there is insufficient basis for law enforcement action. The New York Times reviewed files of INS raids released as part of the settlement of a garment workers union selective enforcement suit against the agency in New York City.

The settlement included a summary that Latinos were 96 percent of the 2, people arrested in the worksite raids carried out by the INS in the district, fat greater than their representation in the city's legal or illegal population. This occurred even where the INS acknowledged that half the workers were not Latino but Asian, including undocumented immigrants. And while some raids were based on informant information, 80 percent were initiated by agents who cited as primary evidence subjects' appearance or language without evidence of wrongdoing.

Undocumented workers were discovered and arrested in all but a few of the reviewed raids, but nearly everyone arrested was Latino.

A federal court in Ohio found violations of the rights of Latinos by that states highway patrol's practice of stopping Latino drivers to question them about their immigration status, including officers even confiscated the green cards of legal migrant workers claiming they were counterfeit. In California, federal courts have found Fourth Amendment violations of Latinos in the stopping of Latinos on the basis of appearance and foreign sounding names. The Supreme Court has held that INS agents working near the Mexican border may use Spanish ethnicity as a basis for detaining a person, but that it may not be the only basis.

A related issue is the targeting by police, first reported by the ACLU in Florida, of Latinos waiting on public sidewalks for labor employers to appear and select them for work, under the offense of being "visual clutter. Racial Profiling: Definition. On a more personal level, those holding racial biases are actually harming themselves, too. When you start feeling anxiety about someone's race, Godsil said, it triggers the amygdala -- the part of the brain that's activated by fear.

If people can begin to let go of the fear, it will benefit them personally as well. Biases often begin at a young age. Nearly everyone hates, but is it our fault? Racial profiling often stems from what researchers call " implicit bias " -- a bias we might not be consciously aware of.

For example, studies show "white people will frequently associate criminality with black people without even realizing they're doing it," according the Perception Institute. Nordstrom Rack apologizes for accusing black teens of stealing And the seeds of bias are often planted in our heads before kindergarten.

Those environmental triggers can come from verbal slurs, ethnic jokes and acts of discrimination. And "mass media routinely take advantage of stereotypes as shorthand to paint a mood, scene or character. Once embedded, these biases are hard to shake. But there are ways to fight back.

The first step is to recognize your own biases.