I was think about this discussion this morning because of an incident I observed on
the way to work.
There was a Ramsey County Sheriff's Canine Unit Squad stop at the traffice light and
the back window of the squad was partially down and the police dog inside was
barking. When I looked over to see what he was getting worked up about the only thing
I could figure was he was barking at the young African-American male waiting at the
bus stop. It didn't look to me like the guy on the corner was acting in a way that
would cause the dog to bark. Granted I wasn't there when the squad pulled up so I
don't know if anything occurred before I got there. It got me wondering though if
the dog wasn't conditioned to do racial profiling though...scary thought.
Dennis Hill
St. Paul
>>> "Jordan S. Kushner" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 03/23/01 09:37AM >>>
----- Original Message -----
From: "Michael Atherton" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Rosalind Nelson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; "Mpls List"
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Friday, March 23, 2001 9:03 AM
Subject: Re: [Mpls] Codefor
>
> I'm not sure that I understand what the point is. I read the posts and
the
> article suggested and I stand by my statement that racial profiling
> and CODEFOR are separate processes and it is important not to
> confuse them.
> An individual officer's bias in selecting members of one
> racial group for traffic stops is not racial profiling.
This is an amazing and disturbing statement. If selecting people for police
intrusions is not the definition of unacceptable racial discrimination, I do
not see how racial discrimination will ever be prevented. Unfortunately I
believe that this is the view that is really prevalent within law
enforcement and their chorus of supporters, and ensures that racism remains
an ingrained practice in police deparments.
> Normally under the
> law an individual must perform some behavior that gives a law enforcement
> officer "justifiable cause" to question them. In true racial profiling a
person
> is not stopped because of their behavior, they are stopped because
> they match a previously defined statistical model. The difference between
> racial profiling and an individual officer biases is that one is
officially approved
> and the other is not. If there is documentation that shows that the MPD
> ordered officers to stop blacks and asians I would be very interested in
> seeing it (as would a number of civil rights lawyers).
>
I think that you are not understanding the "point" because 1) your
definitions of CODEFOR and Racial Profiling are both conveniently narrow,
and 2) it appears that there is a common approach of those defending CODEFOR
to pay very SELCECTIVE attention to the points in the "anti-CODEFOR" posts.
Racial profiling means stop Racial profiling goes way beyond stopping people
based on a statisfical model. In the not so distant past, various law
enforcement agencies did have stated practices that explicitly use race as a
factor in determining whether someone met the "profile" of someone engaged
in criminal activity, particularly drug trafficking. It is now unlikely
that you find this practice occurring overtly because it would obviously
provide easy exposure to lawsuits. (I would like to be able to just say
that the practice is obviously illegal, but amazingly, there are still law
enforcement and government people who argue that it is ok to use race as one
of a variety of factors, including Chritine Todd Whitman in a New York Times
magazine article 1-2 years ago). Racial profiling therefore occurs not
because of any defined body of statististics but based on other factors.
While a determination of these "factors" can be the topic of endless
discussion, I suggest that there are two overwhelming factors: 1) the
individual biases of most police officers, whether conscious or unconscious,
which are common to most people in our society, that people of color are
more likely to be involved in crime; and 2) police department policies which
have the EFFECT (but rarely a stated purpose) of encouraging police to focus
on people of color. CODEFOR is a perfect example of the latter. As
explained, no police deparment is going to explicitly encourage stops based
on race. CODEFOR is as close as it gets. By encouraging the police to
enforce the law "more vigorously" in communities with mostly people of
color, the department is obviously encouraging police to focus on people of
color and therefore effectively engage in racial profiling.
There is an ongoing serious flaw in the reasoning explicit in Mr. Atherton's
post, and the implicit posts of others, that it is ok to disproportionately
focus on people of a specific race for traffic stops as long as there is a
legally justifiable basis. (This is another example of pro-CODEFOR posters
conveniently ignoring points). Regardless of whether there is a legal
reason for a stop, search, arrest or any police action, it is still
discrminatory and illegal if the law is being enforced differently among
people because of race. If a police officer stops a Black person for a
broken tail light, but ignores a Caucasion person for the same violation,
that is discrimination. Even ultra-rightwing supreme court justice Antonin
Scalia recognizes that such discrmination is a violation of the Equal
Protection clause of the U.S. Constitution. (See Whren v. United States,
116 S.Ct. 1769 (1996)).
Jordan Kushner
Powderhorn, Ward 8
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