Explaining Racial Profiling Essay

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Race and Arrests

Racial Profiling, according to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), is a "longstanding and deeply troubling national problem." It involves police and private security personnel targeting people of color based on suspicions, in most cases, that the individual being targeted is up to something illegal. The ACLU states that racial profiling "occurs every day," and the result for the innocent person of color is often a "frightening detention, interrogation, and searches without evidence of criminal activity." The basis for the stop in many cases is a person's perceived race, ethnicity, and national origin -- and in some cases the clothing a person is wearing in addition to the color of his skin. This paper delves into a few of the questions that surround racial profiling: a) why do police feel the need to racially profile people? b) Is it just part of the work of a cop to profile based on skin color; and c) how do police justify racial profiling? The truth of the matter is that the public relies on law enforcement to protect people from harm, and to promote fairness and justice in our communities, the ACLU explains. And when racial profiling occurs in a neighborhood, it causes people to "live in fear, casting entire communities as suspect simply because of what they look like" (ACLU). It isn't just African-Americans that are profiled; there have lately been "unprecedented raids of immigrant communities and work places by local law enforcement in cooperation with federal agencies," the ACLU reports. The communities where there may be undocumented immigrants are the Latino communities. These raids tend to alienate immigrant communities, and the raids and the surrounding publicity tend to open the door to "anti-immigrant rhetoric" that in turn leads to hate crimes. The National Institute of Justice (NIJ) explains that racial profiling is a policy that targets people for suspicion of crime based on race, ethnicity, religion or national origin. By creating a profile of the kinds of individuals who may be known for certain kinds of crime officers might generalize and "act on the generalization rather than specific behavior." This behavior on the part of sworn police officers causes what the NIJ calls "multiple problems." Because of civil rights laws, police have had to go through "expensive litigation" which makes the job of keeping the peace all that much more difficult. Another problem resulting from racial profiling is that relations between police and members of the community become "strained" and moreover, when criminals are aware of what police are profiling, they can "…simply shift their activities outside the profile" (an example used is drug dealers; if they realize cops are profiling young black men, the dealers might switch to Latinos, children or even the elderly (NIJ). Why do police feel the need to profile? According to Jack Glaser, Peter Schuck and Karin Martin of the University of California at Berkeley, "Profiling is not only inevitable, it is in fact sensible public policy under certain conditions and with appropriate safeguards against abuse" (Schuck, 2011). The analogy used is that of a law enforcement person at an airline security checkpoint. "Vast numbers of individuals pass through the officer's line of vision, and they do so only fleetingly, for a few seconds at most." In other words, quick decisions have to be made and all the officer knows about these individuals is "the physical characteristics that can be immediately observed." What if the officer ignores what looks like a very shady, suspicious character just because people are impatient to get through security? And that person he quickly thought about questioning turns out to be a terrorist and does damage that kills people? Hence, police in some situations believe that racial profiling is just part of the job, and this is one way they justify it. The bottom line when it comes to racial profiling is the use of stereotypes to make decisions about stopping a person and questioning that person. In the Berkeley piece, the writer points out that when political officials re-draw legislative districts, they use stereotypes to decide how to redraw a district. If there is a large community of minorities in one district, and the stereotype is that they would tend to vote democratic so a Republican official would want to redraw that district in order to assure more conservative votes. This is one example of how stereotypes are used, but it doesn't intend to be justification for police stopping a car with young black men in the car just because they might be drug dealers (the stereotypical "drug dealer" is supposed to be a young black man wearing certain clothing and jewelry).

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Paragraph TWO -- The Downside of Racial Profiling

The analogy presented in the last paragraph is related to security in an airport or elsewhere in public places where law enforcement is expected to be expert at seeing someone that might be dangerous to the public. The typical police officer driving his patrol car, or his motorcycle through a neighborhood, is not in the same situation as the officer in an airport security position. Meanwhile, why is racial profiling morally wrong and based on false assumptions? Take the situation that happened Thanksgiving Day in Pontiac Michigan; a black man was walking down the street with his hands in his pocket. He was stopped by an officer. It was 33 degrees on Martin Luther King Boulevard, by the way, and a transcript of the conversation is rather telling. Brandon McKean: "All right, well what?" Cop: "you were walking by." McKean: "okay. Walking by and doing what?" Cop: "Well, you were making people nervous." McKean: "By walking by?" Cop: "Yeah, they said you had your hands in your pockets." McKean: "Wow. Walking by with your hands in your pockets makes people nervous to call the police? When it's snowing outside?" Cop: "they did." McKean: "Okay." Cop: "So are you okay?" McKean: "I'm fine How 'bout you?" Cop: "I'm good." McKean: "all right." Cop: "What are you up to today?" McKean: "Walking with my hands in my pockets. Walking." Cop: "Is that an inconvenience to talk to me right now?" McKean: "Hell yeah, just because of the whole police situation going on across the country. This is outrageous that you would let somebody tell you, 'Oh, there's somebody walking down the street with their hands in their pockets.'" Cop: "You're right, but we do have a lot of robberies, so…" (Blair, 2014). What this little incident shows is not so much police racial profiling, but citizen racial profiling that was followed up on by police. If a Caucasian man had been walking in 33 degree temperatures with hands in pockets, would that have frightened citizens enough to call police? That's an interesting question but it also relates to this issue. There were definitely false assumptions in this case, and on the one hand it was the officer's job to check out a citizen complaint, but still, did he need to stop the pedestrian and question him about why he had his hands in his pockets? It doesn't seem reasonable that a man should be questioned by the police unless there is a serious reason; otherwise it appears to be racial profiling. Racial profiling is sometimes motivated by fear -- and in this case the alleged reason the man was stopped was because citizens were supposedly afraid of the man. Racial profiling is morally wrong and based on false assumptions. Mathias Risse writes in the journal Criminal Justice Ethics that the moral issue is important because in the first place there is a "fundamental public good (security)" in question whenever a police officer feels the need to profile an individual. The public good is a two-way street in the case of racial profiling: the officer is sworn to protect the public so in that sense he or she is morally and legally responsible for this protection. And the truth is that officers often have to make split-second decisions regarding who to stop, who to question and who to search; it would be morally wrong to simply assume because of the color of the skin of an individual that he or she would be a suspect. The seriousness of racial profiling was brought into focus on December 1, 2014, when the Attorney General of the United States, Eric Holder, made an announcement regarding racial profiling by federal law enforcement. "This (new initiative) will institute rigorous new standards and robust safeguards," he said (Brumback, 2014). He promised to "end racial profiling, once and for all. This new guidance will codify our commitment to the very highest standards of fair and effective policing" (Brumback). At the same time as Holder was speaking in Atlanta, Georgia, President Obama announced a $263 million spending package that includes money for police video cameras, in order to "…capture their interactions with civilians…to improve community relations" (Brumback). Moreover, Holder said he intends to work towards easing tensions between police departments and minority communities like Ferguson, Missouri. There….....

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