HOW TO STOP CRIMINALS – LEARN FROM THE PROS!
"Anyone with dark skin or who spoke with an accent was taken aside and searched," said the passenger, Mike Glass, 43, of Seattle. "And then they went to any male with too much facial hair."
(Source: “10 Held at Kennedy Airport and La Guardia, Closing Both”, Clifford J. Levy, New York Times, Sept 14, 2001)
Who are all these dark skinned people who’ve been pulled over since September 11? Probably Middle Eastern terrorists, right?
On September 12, a Sikh man was pulled off a train in Rhode Island and arrested for carrying a “knife” – keep in mind that Sikh men are obliged by their religion to carry a ceremonial knife. Sikhs are not Muslims and are also usually not Middle Eastern, but nevertheless the man “was driven away in a police cruiser as the crowds that had been gathered at the station cheered… State and Providence police had surrounded the rail station around 2 p.m. , when it was evacuated and searched. The state bomb squad entered the station carrying equipment and with dogs.”
(Source: “Police take man into custody at Providence rail station”, Providence Journal, September 12 2001)
But it’s not just terrorists- local, state, and federal law enforcement agents are doing their best to protect us from more mundane criminals, such as drug dealers and traffic violators:
In Maryland in 1997, Charles and Etta Carter, an elderly African-American couple from Pennsylvania, were stopped by Maryland State Police on their 40th wedding anniversary. The troopers searched their car and brought in drug-sniffing dogs. During the course of the search, their daughter’s wedding dress was tossed on one of the police cars and, as trucks passed, blown to the ground. Mrs. Carter was not allowed to use the restroom during the search because police officers feared that she would flee. Their belongings were strewn along the highway, trampled and urinated on by the dogs. No drugs were found and no ticket was issued.
(Source: The Daily Record, reprinted in “Driving While Black”, an ACLU special report, June 1999)
“The majority of people they are searching and humiliating are black people. That’s why I was so angry. I went from being an ordinary and decorated officer to a criminal in a matter of minutes”
(Aaron Campbell, a major in the Metro-Dade Police Department who was stopped, wrestled to the ground, hit with pepper spray, and arrested, supposedly due to an illegal lane change and an obscured license tag, reported in the Washington Times, 1997)
But these are just isolated incidents, right?
“I arraign approximately one-third of the felony cases in New York County and
have no recollection of any defendant in a Port Authority Police Department drug
interdiction case who was not either Black or Hispanic”
(New York City Criminal Court Judge, early 1990s, reprinted in “Driving While Black” an ACLU special report, June 1999)
66% of Blacks believe they are treated less fairly by the police in their community
44% of Blacks and 29% of Hispanics feel that the police have stopped them at some time in their life because of their race or ethnic background
21% of Blacks reported unfair dealings with the police in the past month, rising to 27% of those under 35, and 31% of Black men
(Source: Gallup Poll on Race Relations in America, 2001 Update)
A study of stop and arrest data on the New Jersey turnpike from 1988 to 1991 showed that Blacks comprised 13.5% of the drivers and 15% of the speeders, but represented 35% of those stopped and 73.2% of those arrested.
A similar study in Maryland showed that while 74.7% of speeders were White and 17.5% were black, 79.2% of the drivers searched were Black
(Source: "A Resource Guide on Racial Profiling Data Collection Systems", Northwestern University, for the US Department of Justice)
But racial profiling is justified because minorities are more likely to be involved in crimes, right?
In low-discretion cases, such as red-light violations or speeding detected with radar equipment, where police have less of a personal decision whether or not to stop someone, the percentage of minorities goes down, while the percentage of whites increases. In Montgomery County, Alabama, Hispanics made up 11.4% of total stops, but only 8.8% of red light/radar stops; The figures for Black Drivers were 27.3% and 26.2%, respectively. Whites, in contrast, made up 56.3% of radar/red light violations, but 52.7% of stops as a whole
(Source: "Traffic Stop Rates Show Disparities" Washington Post, Nov 2, 2001)
In the Maryland study, 28.4% of Black drivers who were searched were found to have contraband, compared to 28.8% of Whites- a difference of only 0.4%.
In New Jersey, between 1997-1998, 10.5% of searches involving Whites resulted in an arrest, compared to 13.5% of searches involving Blacks, a difference of only 3%.
(Source: "A Resource Guide on Racial Profiling Data Collection Systems" Northwestern University for the US Department of Justice)
Well, even if it is widespread, it’s the result of personal racism, not any sort of institutional bias, right?
In 1985, the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles issued guidelines for the police on "The Common Characteristics of Drug Couriers". The guidelines cautioned troopers to be suspicious of “rental cars, ... drivers wearing ’lots of gold’ or who do not ’fit the vehicle’, and "ethnic groups associated with the drug trade."
(Source: "Driving While Black- Racial Profiling On Our Nation's Highways", ACLU special report, June 1999)
"One form of deterrence might be to develop a proclivity toward the type of persons and vehicles which are usually involved in these crimes."
(Source: Internal memo written by the Chief of Tumbul, Connecticut’s all-white police force, Ambrosini in 1993)
New Jersey State Trooper Emblez Longoria filed a lawsuit in 1999 claiming that he was "required to work in an atmosphere where the routine violation of constitutional rights of motorists and citizens of color was not only standard practice, but encouraged and required by his supervisors."
(Source: "Trooper Says State Police in New Jersey Discriminate", New York Times, Feb 6, 1999)
“Governor Christine Todd Whitman and Attorney General Peter G. Verniero concede for the first time that some New Jersey state troopers singled out Black and Hispanic drivers on highways and that at least 77 percent of those drivers troopers sought to search were minorities... Whitman says that while there was no official policy allowing profiling, various policies combined to create an atmosphere that went beyond simple racism.”
(Source: "Whitman Says Troopers Used Racial Profiling", New York Times April 21, 1999)
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