A "Profiling" Pall On the Terror War

Front Page Magazine ^ | May 6, 2003 | HEATHER MACDONALD

[WaterDragon]

"Racial profiling" has heated up again, and that's bad news for the war on terror. Maryland, New Jersey and California -- key battlegrounds in homeland security -- have recently taken measures against the alleged bias of their police officers.

Ironically, such actions will cripple the unbiased policing that could prevent the next terrorist attack on U.S. soil.

It is widely assumed that racial profiling is both common and well documented. In fact, the evidence for it is weak. Studies typically compare police enforcement data -- stops, searches or arrests, for example -- with a population benchmark.

If the rates of stops or arrests for minorities are disproportionate to their share of a population, critics conclude that the police must be singling civilians out on the basis of race, not behavior.

Such an analysis would make sense only if lawbreaking were spread evenly across the population. It is not. Disparate crime rates do not mean, however, that the police routinely use race to find criminals -- or should.

Officers observe a wealth of nonracial cues to determine whom to approach. Some of these cues are actual violations of the law, such as speeding or vehicle equipment violations.

Others raise a suspicion of criminality -- resemblance to a wanted perpetrator, for example, or furtive movements, or a jerk of a waistband to conceal a gun.

During a car stop, the lack of agreement among a vehicle's passengers about the purpose of the trip -- or even about each other's names -- may suggest drug trafficking.

Not everyone who acts suspiciously is breaking the law, but most people who are breaking the law act suspiciously. Given that crime rates differ greatly across races, so will such conduct.

Officers responding solely to behavioral cues or crime reports will therefore not stop, search or arrest a racially proportionate sample of the population.

Undoubtedly some individual officers have used race as a shortcut to finding lawbreakers, but there is no evidence that this lazy and unprofessional practice is systemic....(SNIP)

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