Police and Racial Profiling.Is police tactic fair? NO The practice of racial profiling--stopping people as possible criminal suspects because of their racial or ethnic background--by law-enforcement authorities in the United States comes in many forms. All of them are disgusting. Last summer, sadistic sa·dism n. 1. The deriving of sexual gratification or the tendency to derive sexual gratification from inflicting pain or emotional abuse on others. 2. The deriving of pleasure, or the tendency to derive pleasure, from cruelty. members of the Oklahoma State Police spent more than two hours humiliating Rossano Gerald, a 37-year-old Army sergeant, and his 12-year-old son, Greg. Why did this happen? Greg and Sergeant Gerald were guilty of America's original sin. They were born black. In New York City New York City: see New York, city. New York City City (pop., 2000: 8,008,278), southeastern New York, at the mouth of the Hudson River. The largest city in the U.S. , young black and Hispanic males (and in some cases females) are stopped, frisked, and harassed in breathtaking numbers. New York New York, state, United States New York, Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, like most public officials, will not acknowledge that his police officers are targeting people by race. "The stops are driven by the descriptions of the person who committed the crime," he says. Spare me. The vast majority of these stops are in no way connected to the commission of a specific crime, and the mayor knows it. They are arbitrary and unconscionable Unusually harsh and shocking to the conscience; that which is so grossly unfair that a court will proscribe it. When a court uses the word unconscionable to describe conduct, it means that the conduct does not conform to the dictates of conscience. intrusions on the rights of New Yorkers. Most Americans have no idea of the extent of the race-based profiling that is carried out by law-enforcement officials, and the demoralizing de·mor·al·ize tr.v. de·mor·al·ized, de·mor·al·iz·ing, de·mor·al·iz·es 1. To undermine the confidence or morale of; dishearten: an inconsistent policy that demoralized the staff. effect it has on its victims. As the American Civil Liberties Union American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), nonpartisan organization devoted to the preservation and extension of the basic rights set forth in the U.S. Constitution. has written, "No person of color Noun 1. person of color - (formal) any non-European non-white person person of colour individual, mortal, person, somebody, someone, soul - a human being; "there was too much for one person to do" is safe from this treatment anywhere, regardless of their obedience to the law." --BOB HERBERT Times columnist YES When asked, most cops will declare themselves color blind. But watch them on the job for several months, and get them talking about the way policing is really done, and the truth will emerge. The truth is that cops, white and black, profile. Here's why, they say. African-Americans commit a disproportionate percentage of the types of crimes that draw the attention of the police. Blacks make up 12 percent of the population, but accounted for 58 percent of all carjackers between 1992 and 1996. Black males between the ages of 14 and 24 make up 1.1 percent of the population, yet commit more than 28 percent of its homicides. Reason, not racism, cops say, directs their attention. The police chief in Los Angeles, Bernard Parks, who is black, argues that racial profiling The consideration of race, ethnicity, or national origin by an officer of the law in deciding when and how to intervene in an enforcement capacity. Police officers often profile certain types of individuals who are more likely to perpetrate crimes. is rooted in statistical reality. "It's not the fault of the police when they stop minority males or put them in jail," Parks says. "In my mind it is not a great revelation that if officers are looking for criminal activity, they're going to look at the kind of people who are listed on crime reports." Parks defends the idea that the police can legitimately factor in race when building a profile of a criminal suspect. --From an article by Jeffrey Goldberg in The New York Times Magazine |
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