Racial Profiling?

[insideShiraz]

My Two Cents...

I tip my hat to law enforcement and especially fire fighters...

But cops basically pull people over looking for warrents, rather than doing good Policework. It's easier than crime fighting, and helps to bolster their Quota.

"Racial profiling" calling is an equal cop-out. It's just another way to make people walk on Egg shells. Rappers talk about injustice, all the while making the Streets completely unsafe...

And that's the Way it was...

 

[Laurel]

So what to do? Find other corroborative evidence to tip the scales that any particular orange
person is engaging in criminal activity. Otherwise known as police work.

Bingo. Amen and Hallelujah.

 

[wolfie69]

Rappers are making the streets unsafe???????????

There is a fine line between profiling and knowing your turf....

 

[Adoratrice]

...So let me get this straight...you all can tell that "Most" officers are bad because of how they are dressed & the kind of car they drive?...interesting.

 

[Laurel]

That's definitely not my opinion. I think the vast majority of police officers follow the rules and do their job - and it's definitely one of the toughest jobs in our society. It takes a special kind of person to be a cop. They must be devoted to the greater good. They must be able to push aside their own personal feelings and enforce the law without heat or prejudice. They must be able to treat those who break the law - the rapists, the murderers, the illegally parked - as "innocent until proven guilty".

It's not a job I could do - I'll be honest with you. However, for the system to work properly, police officers MUST follow the law. There's no room for vigilante justice - they are not judges. They are there to detain the perp - who, by law, is innocent at that point and thus deserves to be treated as such.

I still agree with RonG - profiling of any kind is lazy policework. Following leads and gathering & interpreting evidence is how crime is solved, not the harassment of certain people because they're skin is dark or their hair is long. Not only is it lazy, but it violates basic principles of our Constitution.

My problem isn't with police officers. My problem is with shoddy policework and unConstitutional tactics.

 

[Expertise]

Laurel your comments say something about your cops and you

The suggestion that a cop walking up and saying "hi how ya' doin' whats goin' on"? is some sort of intimidation is silly. The only reason it should be intimidating is if you are in fact doing something wrong. People in our city know they are not going to be beaten or harassed unecessarily by us.

Your suggestion that because someone is wearing a badge when they say hello it becomes intimidation is kind of unbelievable to me. I will not even ask for ID without a reason (standing on a corner isn't a good enough one). Neither will I or anybody else I know pull over a car or even call in the plate without reason (it is grounds for dismissal in fact). We will not check your car unless it is a vehicle compliance "checkstop" and we are checking ALL vehicles.

What you say is bad and lazy police work is us not being a flock of ostrich's. It is us doing our jobs not avoiding it. It is people trying to do their best within the law (remembering that what you have cited is illegal search and or seizure).

If I see an individual that is doing all the "right" things in the "right" place at the "right" time whereby the likelyhood that he is or is about to commit an illegal act is very high.... and I ignore it or don't go speak with him, I am neither serving nor protecting my community. Nor am I doing good police work.

The fact that you think this way suggests to me that you have had some negative experiences with the police (not saying you were in the wrong) or that your police actually are the stereotypes displayed on the news or perhaps you believe the news a little too much




[Edited by Expertise on 10-13-2000 at 06:25 AM]

 

[TigerClaw]

 

[Latina]

I am Mexican, my husband is a German/English mix (in other words WHITE) and our adopted son is black. We get lots of racist attitude from all 3 ethnic groups (I'm not Mexican enough because I speak NO Spanish and have a non-Mexican family). Son can't fully appreciate his black heritage with non-black parents. The white race doesn't produce enough WHITE children, how could he adopt a BLACK child. And so on.

Years before he met me, my husband had a black girlfriend. He got stopped on a date because a black girl in a car with a white man HAD to be a hooker--in the police mentality, there could be NO other reason for her to be with him, and since prostitution is illegal in California, they were both hassled for HOURS. When she explained that she was a much-respected member of her church and her community, the officer told her not to back-talk or he would "throw both your asses in jail." And this is in California, widely considered the most LIBERAL state in the U.S.! Husband later saw that SAME officer on the TV news, suspended for beating a black man LITERALLY to death (and no it wasn't Rodney King, who SURVIVED his beating). Yes, you read that right, the officer was SUSPENDED from his job, not FIRED, and not ARRESTED for first-degree murder!

Yeah, racial profiling is SUCH a good idea! This thread started by arguing that if 99 orange people on yellow horses are criminals, the police have a right to suspect that the 100th must be one, too. Well, someone on Literotica confessed to murder recently, guess we'd better all be arrested as murderers, if one Literotican is a murderer maybe others are too. After all, we all fit the PROFILE, because we post on Literotica. And if some innocent person is inconvenienced by police hassling, time in jail, or even a wrongful execution, oh well, at least we're fighting CRIME!

Martin Luther King, Jr. longed for a day when his children would be judged not by the color of their skin, but by the content of THEIR character (notice he didn't say he wanted his children to be judged by the content of the character of someone who has some PROFILING characteristic in common with his children). Sadly, 32 years after he was murdered, Doctor King's dream is STILL a far-off goal!

-- Latina

 

[Purple Haze]

In the city where I live, there are very few black people, asians, hispanics, almost all white. I came to work one morning to see a policeman arresting a poorly dressed Native American for something, probably sleeping in front of my store. Had he been a white guy in a three piece suit, he probably wouldn't have been bothered. I noticed he left his coat behind, and when I handed it to him, he looked at me square in the eye and asked me why I called the cops on him. I told him I didn't, and two minutes later I realized that my not even questioning the circumstances will haunt me to my dying day. Hindsight is a motherfucker.

 

[RonG]

Straddling a very pointed fence

First, I do wish to clarify something - I am a big supporter of law enforcement. They can not just walk away from an ugly situation like I, as a private citizen, can choose to do. But I do want to add some perspective on the folly of racial profiling and the incorrect intuition that leads folks to believe it is a good idea.

Conditional probabilities, knowing that event A has occurred what is the likelihood that event B will occur, is often counterintuitive. For example, most people are aware of the birthday paradox: Get more than 23 people in the same room and the odds are better than 50/50 that two people will share the same birthday. Howzat? There are 365+ days in the year and only 23 people so the odds must be more like 1 out of 18. Wrong! The odds go up geometrically due to the fact that the question is not "What is the chance that any individual is born on a particular day?" but rather "What are the odds that all of these people are born on different days?" Figure that out over 23 different permutations and the odds become better than even money that two people share the same day.

So what does this have to do with the price of apples? Knowing that orange folks have been found and convicted more times does mean that if you arrest a large sample, you are likely to get one hit. But it does not mean that any one individual is a potential hit. And since we do intend that one is innocent until proven guilty and the fifth ammendment protection against self-incrimination means that we should not be compelled to volunteer anything until reasonable cause exists, selective engagement/confrontation based on association is wrong. So to kill the sermon, racial profiling is bad statistics and bad social policy.

 

[Laurel]

The fact that you think this way suggests to me that you have had some negative experiences with the police (not saying you were in the wrong) or that your police actually are the stereotypes displayed on the news or perhaps you believe the news a little too much

Actually, I haven't even received a parking ticket. All my contacts with police officers have been extremely cordial. However, I'm a small white girl. And it's not my experiences that matter - it's those of society as a whole. I'm not blind enough to believe that just because my life's hunky-dorey that everything's fine.

I'm not sure why my suggestion that all people should be treated fairly and justly would lead you to believe that I dislike cops. That's a strange leap of logic, one that says more about you than it does about me.

I don't care if the officer is walking up to that guy on the corner and handing him a dozen roses. It's the very idea that he's thrown under suspicion simply because of the color of his skin or the way he's dressed. And the fact is that, though you may handle the situation differently, many officers don't just walk up, smile, and say, "Hey pal, how are you tonight?"

Latina's experiences aren't unique. There's a reason that many folks in Compton and other urban areas fear the police. BTW - they just suspended over a dozen more L.A. cops in the rampart scandal. What's frustrating to me is that rather than shun those who dirty the badge, the majority of good officers defend and protect officers when they would arrest a common person for committing the same crimes. Why the wall of silence? Why this feeling of brotherhood for criminals within your ranks? Please explain.

 

[CreamyLady]

Compton doesn't even have a police department anymore; it was disbanded and the L.A. Sheriff's office took over.

I don't know why they band together except for the siege mentality that seems to imbue a lot of police departments. No one is a better friend than the person who might save your ass -- even if the friend is a dirty cop. It's an "us vs. them" attitude.

 

[Expertise]

I can only speak for my "region" and I know that LA and the LAPD is a whole different ball of wax but in this area the mythical "wall of silence" is just that a myth.

Now saying that I am sure there are indescretions that go unreported. But for the most part the police officers I have met hold themselves and their fellow officers to a "higher" moral code. In fact I can't imagine any of those that I work with not doing "the right thing". In fact some recently did and it resulted in the trial and (last week) firing of a officer I have known since highschool. I do not bare them ill will because it was the right thing to do.

Re. your assertion that because we place (in our minds) an individual under suspicion based on the factors described above is somehow harmfull to said individual is beyond me. Sorry but I suspect people every day, salesmen, telemarketers, politicians... The bottom line is this. If I suspect someone (not detained him, or "formally questioned" etc.) I have in no way caused him harm. I have respected his rights under "the Charter" (this is Canada) and done my job. Part of our (and most police officers) job description includes the phrase "To PREVENT criminal activity...." I would far rather by "presence" or any other legal means prevent a crime, than ivestigate one later.

By the way. Sorry if I sounded nasty when I commented on your reasoning. Guess we'll just have to disagree

 

[Sparky Kronkite]

Where is the line in the sand here? Are all you folks out there, I'll simply call you anti-suspicious types - not suspicious of anyone - at all?

I think I would have to say, "liar, liar, pants on fire."

I believe that generally - modern PC trained people - when speaking about all these issues - would not openly admit to any "wrong/negative" thinking. But - I beleive that everyone is prejudice. Certainly by degree from small to large and certainly by public admitance to it - but it's there - it has to be. Everyone does - judge a book by it's cover. I believe they just have a hard time admitting to it.

If any - any - degree of prejudice exists in a person - then suspicion is there as well.

If anyone would tell me different - I'd believe them unaware of their own truths and realities.

As for the Blue Wall - here in NYC - right after the Amado Diallo case hit the fan - a "suspicious" (hey there's that word again) just happened to open the nearest man-hole cover to the precinct house. Something like 27 illegal (for police to carry) weapons were found in it. 27!

 

[Sparky Kronkite]

On being suspicious......

In the USMC - made this buddy - went home with him, eat with his folks - skated with him and his girl friend - they set me up with one of her friends - a 6 month time period. Pretty good friends right"

I bought a pair of shoes - disco days - disco like shoes (man I can't believe I wore those stupid things) anyway - back then I made $125 every two weeks. It's amazing how much Uncle Sam will pay his shooter's to risk their lives.

Anyway, the shoes were a stretch. This "friend" told me he thought they were cool - I'm in the shower - had put said pair of shoes on my bunk - came back - gone.

Hmmmmm? What the fuck? Right? Asked a couple of guys close by - nope - they didn't know. This guy, my "friend" was now in the shower. He left his car keys on his bunk. I grabbed'em and sprinted (yes I could've been wrong so I was hauling ass to put his keys back) - I opened his trunk and there sat my fucking shoes.

I grabbed'em, ran back upstairs and put'em out of sight - put his keys back and left before he returned. Wish I'd have seen his face when he opened his trunk. Man!

Suspicion is important to survival!!!!! Anyone that says they do not "suspect" ("wonder about," I guess that's more PC) is not telling the truth or they don't survive very well.

It's simple human nature.

 

[Latina]

The point is, you suspected your friend because he had talked about liking your shoes (motive), and he had been at the right place at the right time to have taken them while you were in the shower (opportunity), and then your shoes were missing. You investiagated (opened his trunk) and took back your shoes first, before confronting and accusing him of something you weren't 100% sure he had done. In fact, it sounds like you never confronted him at all. You also don't even mention whether your friend was black, Asian, Latin, or whatever, or whether you ever considered his ethnicity as a factor before opening his trunk. You had befriended this person, so obviously up to the shoe incident, you did not consider race as a factor in whether to let him be your friend. None of your story matches the behavior of a racial profiler.

You didn't drive around town looking for a black man in a big fancy Cadillac, whom you had never met before, to suspect HIM of taking your shoes, on the theory that a black man who drives a Cadillac MUST have stolen the car, and therefore he is the type who might have stolen your shoes, too. THAT would have been racial profiling.

That is the difference between good detective work and racial profiling. The good detective is called to a store hold-up, looks at the video-surveillance tape to find the armed-robber's face, maybe finds the robber's fingerprints on a countertop, matches the face and fingerprints to someone who has 23 convinctions for armed robbery. Based on this thorough investigation, the detective gets a search warrant, and finds the store's missing money in the suspect's home. He also finds a gun, and checks that the ballistics of the suspect's gun match a bullet found in the store. Whether the suspect was a minority was never a consideration in this investigation, only gathering evidence of who to suspect, and whether that suspect actually committed the crime.

The racial profiler walks out of that same store without looking at the surveillance tape or checking for fingerprints, sees a "suspicious" black person half a block from the store, holding a bottle of gin and talking to himself, and arrests that person as the armed bandit, based on "police experience" and "gut instinct" that he is "the kind who might have held-up the store to get a few bucks for that bottle of gin he's holding." He's black, blacks in that neighborhood have robbed other stores in the past, and he looks like he couldn't afford the price of the bottle he's holding, therefore he MUST the bandit. There's no gun, but police hunch says he toosed it down a sewer. As the wino is being hauled away in handcuffs, the white man who held up the store watches, then enters the store across the street and robs IT at gun-point, too.

In my earlier true story, the racial profiler pulls over a white man (my husband, before we met) who's got a black woman in the car, and thinks she must be a hooker. She was in jeans and T-shirt with her hair in a kerchief, and he was in caual slacks and golf-shirt. They fit the hooker-John profle ONLY in the sense of he was white and she was black, he doesn't have a fancy car and look like a rich white guy crusing for cheap thrills. She's not in hot pants, boots, and black stockings, or anything else a hooker might typically wear. She talks like the well-educated person she is. But the cop had NEVER seen an interracial couple in ANY other setting except hooker-and-customer, and could not FATHOM that it could be anything else! The cop didn't see him cruising for hookers (because he had picked her up at her suburban middle-class home), or her walking the streets. The driver did not drive eratically or violate any traffic law, and the neighborhood was not one where hookers were ever found. Thre was NO probable cause to stop them and hassle them for an hour, other than the fact of a black woman riding beside a white man in a car. I can't see how ANYONE can interpret that sort of racial profiling as REMOTELY resembling good police work!

This weekend was a parent's weekend at our son's school. Most of the other students are white. One of them bought our son a hair pick to use to be "more black" because in this white child's mind, our son doesn't look or talk black enough! Can you even imagine how such a simple action hurt him on so MANY levels?

Bad statistics and bad police reasoning do NOT justify racism--EVER! PERIOD!

-- Latina

 

[Sparky Kronkite]

Yeah sure.....

I didn't provide all those details...........

Because I'm learning to keep my threads short!

At least I'm trying.

I have never really been discussing "racial" profiling.

I've been attempting to open the discussion a bit - "prejudice, suspicion, intuition" is really what is of interest here.

It's obvious to any "thinking" person that blatant, negative, racial motive - about anything - is wrong.

I'm just trying to get everyone - everyone - to admit that they harbor some form of prejudice - that leads to suspicion - and can sometimes be called intuition.

I hope my response was short enough - and still clear.

This ain't no court room - ya know.

 

[Expertise]

Why can you people not see the distinction!!??

Latina what you just described is not profiling it is an unlawful search. I have not mentioned race because I tend to use when where why and what instead of who or what color.

You keep giving these pie in the sky examples. For instance your robbery scenario.I see a man (I could give a flying fuck if he's purple by the way) with a balaclava a paper bag and a weird protrusion under his arm looking furtively and nervously around while darting towards the store you mentioned. Should I?

A) Be suspicous and go check it out.
B) Be PC and wait util the clerk dials 911 (because he hasn't actually committed a visible crime) then do a complete and thorough investigation and notify the other clerks next of kin
C) Because of the fear of casting suspicion on him assume that he was just some poor downtrodden soul who hadn't had his daily dose of Paxil and was just really nervous.

Profiling and racism are two different things. Simple as that. What you described was racism. What I described was profiling. Are there police officers who are racists and integrate there bias into profiling? No doubt about it. But that is a bad police officer nothing more or less.

Profiling is not "lazy" or bad police work it is a necessary and effective tool.

I am so sick of the fucking "race card". They are different, sorry but thats it. I am done with this subject

 

[Sparky Kronkite]

Those who play the race card.....

Only see the race card.

It is they who are in fact racists.

Those who do not play the race card don't do so because they don't see it. It not on their radar.

 

[Latina]

Sparky says:

------------------------------------
"Those who play the race card.....
Only see the race card.

It is they who are in fact racists.

Those who do not play the race card don't do so because they don't see it. It not on their radar."
------------------------------------

When people around you constantly rub race into your face, you BET your radar becomes tuned to it. That makes you racist ONLY if you judge them back, based on THEIR race. I strive to hate the RACISM, not the person who is racist, or the entire ethnic group to whom that racist happens to belong. I hate the Jew-bashing of a Lewis Farkhan or the gay-bashing of certain members of the religious right, every bit as much as I hate the N word from the mouth of a hooded, cross-burning klansman.

PBS did an interesting program a few years ago, where they divided a class of adults into blue-eyed people and brown-eyed people. Every day, it was hammered into the class in so many blatant AND subtle ways, that blue-eyed people are smart and fun and industrious and trustworthy, while brown-eyed people are lazy and stupid and trouble-makers. After weeks of this brain-washing, the teacher praising everything blue-eyed people did and puting-down everything brown-eyed people did, the blue-eyed people came to mistrust brown-eyed people, and worse, brown-eyed people began to feel that they truly WERE inferior to blue-eyed people. Because the class were adults, it was possible to undo the damage that these few weeks did, and tell them it was all an experment. But imagine that kids hear this racism every day from infancy, and nobody tells them after a few weeks that it was just a game to test how they would react. That happens to MANY ethnic children every day all over the world.

Profiling buys into that mentality. 10 brown-eyed people have done something bad, so let's be suspicious of ANY brown-eyed people, and make brown-eyed people mistrust each other, too. Someone on this thread mentioned profiling as seeing a black person with a bulge in his clothes that looks like a gun, glancing around nervously, and the cop is supsicious as a result. But again, that is not profiling, that is common sense: if the person was WHITE and had a gun and looked around nervously, the cop should be JUST as suspicious. Again, it is the behavior of the INDIVIDUAL that is supsicious. Profiling is being suspicious for the mere FACT of the person's skin color or clothing, even if they are not actually DOING anything that looks suspicious. A cop IS protecting himself if he suspects a black (OR a white) person who is doing something that looks odd, but that same cop may actually be putting himself in MORE jeopardy if his profiling instincts have him suspicious of a black man but NOT of a white man, or suspicious of a bearded man in leather jacket on a motorcycle, but not of a clean-shaven man in suit and tie driving a Buick.

Martin Luther King Jr. was put down for his race every day of his all-too-brief life, and his reaction was to show love back to those who put you down, whether they are white or black, Catholic or Protestant, Jew or Gentile. He pointed out racism wherever he found it, but he was clearly no racist for doing so. He was exceptional, I admit, but we can all at least STRIVE to be more like King. Answering hate with love confuses the hater and eventually gets them to at least tolerate you, maybe even like you. And if you do not hate back, YOU are a better and stronger person, even if the other person continues to hate you forever.

Pointing out the racism is not "playing the race card" and being a racist, it is pointing out somthing that exists that needs to change. It is hypocitical to claim that we all have some racism in us, and then say that being aware that there IS racism, and pointing out examples of racism, makes YOU a racist. Is it better to suffer the racism and never speak out about it? How many thousands of black people never spoke out against racism and wound up swinging by a rope in some Mississippi tree?

My mother-in-law's grandparents, who were Jewish and lived in Germany, said "give Hitler a chance. He might turn-around this depressed economy [inflation was so rapid, that a week's wages paid in the morning would buy only a loaf of bread by afternoon], and if he doesn't work out, we voted him into office, we can always vote him back out." Would they have been racists if, instead, they had screamed from the rooftops "this man's book Mein Kampf says he wants to eliminate all Jewish people all over the world. How can Jewish citizens of Germany even THINK of voting him into office?" That would have been "playing the race card", wouldn't it--the mere fact of pointing out racism, making Frank's great-grandaparents racist too? Is it better that they said nothing and 6 million Jews (including them) were murdered, along with another 6 million Catholics, Gypsies, gays, etc.?

Maybe you are right, there might be a tinge of racism in everyone. The secret is to REALIZE it, and work to overcome it. Racial profilers do NOT see anything wrong with being racist, do NOT work to overcome it, and in fact will defend to the death their right to be that way. Your right to be a racist ends where it causes harm to ME, just as your right to swing your fist ends at the tip of my nose.

-- Latina

 

[Latina]

"Those who do not play the race card don't do so because they don't see it. It not on their radar."

Why ISN'T it on your radar, Sparky? Surely you are not saying there IS no racism! So why are you NOT seeing it and screaming out against it?

-- Latina

 

[Latina]

Odd, at lunch time I read an editorial by a local newspaper columnist, on the very topic of racial profiling. It said that if you take the WEIGHT of all narcotics confiscated by police in California, only 12% of the drugs were found in the hands of black men. Yet 62% of all people in California prisons for drug possesion are black males (the claimed source of these figures was arrest, court, and prison records, and I may be sticking my neck out, but I'm going to ASSUME that this newspaper columnist did her homework in researching these statistics). Further, prison sentences for blacks found to possess drugs are about twice as long as sentences for white drug users. Apparently, most of the black users are found with crack cocaine, which by California law carries twice the penalty of the powdered cocaine favored by white users--I can't say for sure that this particular law was racially motivated, but if it looks like a duck and it walks like a duck and it quacks like a duck...

To then use racial profiling--the argument that 62% of all California drug prisoners are black, and that their crimes are more "serious" because they are incarcerated for twice as many years--as an excuse to detain even MORE black people on suspicion of drug possession--then becomes an exercise in circitous logic. Police arrest a disproportionately large percentage of blacks over whites for crimes that BOTH are doing, and hold blacks twice as long for the same crimes, and then use these injust statistics to justify arresting even MORE blacks because they fit the "racial profile" of those previously arrested in disproportinate numbers.

Am I truly the only Literotican whose radar is picking up on this racism, as Sparky claims?

-- Latina

 

[Sparky Kronkite]

Latina finally writes........

Maybe you (Sparky) are right, there might be a tinge of racism in everyone. The secret is to REALIZE it, and work to overcome it. Racial profilers do NOT see anything wrong with being racist, do NOT work to overcome it, and in fact will defend to the death their right to be that way. Your right to be a racist ends where it causes harm to ME, just as your right to swing your fist ends at the tip of my nose.

Well Latina I don't know about the defend to the death part. I have hope that all can learn and change.

But know this, everything I've written here, whether true to my beliefs or merely written as a catalyst for discussion - has only been in attempt to "get even one - just one," person to admit this. Once a person has admitted to "their own possibilities of racism" then, and only then can there begin rational dialogue toward correcting the problem of racism.

I strongly feel that most people, clergy, political leaders whoever - are simply afraid to take that step, this step - the step to admitting ones own racial prejudices - a step I took a long time ago.

Good thinking.

 

[TigerClaw]

.