Re: Common Sense and Profiling

["Keith Howe" <kkhowe@moscow.com>]

There are so many reasons why profiling is not only wrong but essentially
useless that I don't even have to think them up myself... here is a
smattering of quotes and links from people who have said it all better than
I could hope to:

"It's hard in the best of times for Congress to resist temptation in passing
symbolic legislation," said Jonathan Turley, a professor at George
Washington University who specializes in constitutional law and national
security issues. "In the aftermath of an attack, there is little
limitation."

"If a tragedy causes us to take away basic rights," he said, "then the
terrorists have won and -- like the lives lost -- have taken away something
that is very precious."

http://www.globalexchange.org/september11/sfchron091301b.html

A key reason why racial profiling should never be considered a legitimate
tool for law enforcement is that the concept of race is absolutely
arbitrary. Who among us can distinguish an Afghan or a Saudi man from a
crowd of people as diverse as that which passes through most East Coast
airports? It is to be hoped that we've all learned enough from the recent
murder of Balbir Singh Sodhi, a Sikh gas station owner in Mesa, Ariz., to
know that a beard and a turban do not a terrorist make.

Once Congress passes laws that make racial profiling OK for the specific
purpose of combating terrorism, some attorney somewhere will twist the
meaning of that law to justify race-based traffic stops or drug searches in
other, non-terrorist contexts. From there, it's a slippery slope to the
mentality that driving while black means you're just asking for trouble from
the police.

 http://www.abqjournal.com/opinion/guest_columns/guestb10-04-01.htm

In 1972, profiling was implemented in order to deter hijackers. Twenty eight
hijackings of U.S. passenger planes occured that year. Only when everybody's
carry-on luggage was examined did such terrorist activity come to a halt.

http://www.aclu.org/news/w100996b.html

The unpleasant truth is that profiling can be statistically valid yet have
discriminatory real world results, since most blacks who are stopped on
suspicion (like most males) will be innocent people. And the more innocent
people within a given group who are treated as suspect, the more all members
of the group will suspect discriminatory motives on the part of the police.
That's one more reason why statistics alone can't determine public policy.

http://www.stats.org/newsletters/9904/profile.htm

A career soldier and a highly decorated veteran of Desert Storm and
Operation United Shield in Somalia, SFC Gerald, a black man of Panamanian
descent, found that he could not travel more than 30 minutes through the
state without being stopped twice: first by the Roland City Police
Department, and then by the Oklahoma Highway Patrol.

During the second stop, which lasted two-and-half hours, the troopers
terrorized SFC Gerald's 12-year-old son with a police dog, placed both
father and son in a closed car with the air conditioning off and fans
blowing hot air, and warned that the dog would attack if they attempted to
escape. Halfway through the episode - perhaps realizing the extent of their
lawlessness - the troopers shut off the patrol car's video evidence camera.

http://www.aclu.org/profiling/report/index.html