[econjack]

If most of the crime in an area is committed by one demographic group and the statistics support that, at what point does “good police work” degrade into “profiling”? It seems to me that’s a pretty slippery slope that attorneys could bandy about for some time.

[Boogieman]

Even if they were "profiling", that in itself is not prohibited. Only "racial profiling" has been prohibited by the feds. Profiling against hispanics is NOT racial profiling:

"The U.S. Census Bureau defines the ethnonym Hispanic or Latino to refer to "a person of Cuban, Mexican, Puerto Rican, South or Central American, or other Spanish culture or origin regardless of race"

http://www.census.gov/prod/cen2010/briefs/c2010br-04.pdf