4um: What Constitutes Racial Profiling?

Title: What Constitutes Racial Profiling?
Source: [None]
URL Source: http://www.newswithviews.com/PaulProctor/proctor185.htm
Published: Jul 24, 2009
Author: Paul Proctor
Post Date: 2009-07-24 10:17:13 by christine
Keywords: None
Views: 244
Comments: 18

Harvard Scholar, Henry Louis Gates, was arrested on his front porch on July 16th by police responding to a call from witnesses reporting a possible break-in at a residence in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It seems Mr. Gates and another man had to use force to gain entry through a jammed door – be it his own.

Apparently, he would not have been arrested and charged with “disorderly conduct” had he simply cooperated with police and shown some identification – something an officer must have upon arrival at a potential crime scene in order to make sure the parties involved are indeed who they claim to be. For an officer to simply assume someone at a potential crime scene is not the perpetrator would be careless, irresponsible and dangerous for everyone involved. Verifiable identities must first be established.

Gates not only refused to cooperate with officers investigating, but also became belligerent in his objections to their request for identification, reportedly getting “loud” and “tumultuous” with police – calling their demands “racial profiling.” Mr. Gates, you see, is an African-American and the arresting officer is not.

The fact that Barack Obama commented on the incident at a Wednesday news conference, saying that police “acted stupidly,” seemed rather odd to me, bringing to mind another controversial identity issue in the news: Obama’s own refusal to provide a copy of his original long-form, hospital-generated, birth certificate to prove his American citizenship – something every candidate for president must do to satisfy the Constitutional requirement of being a “natural born citizen.”

To simply assume that he is, just because he claims to be, would also be careless, irresponsible and dangerous for everyone involved. If it is eventually discovered that he is not a natural born citizen, then everything he has signed into law, every Executive Order he has given and every appointment he made as the President of the United States of America would instantly become invalid and we would have a national crisis on our hands.

You see, Obama’s “Certificate Of Live Birth,” which is posted online, is not the same thing as an original long-form birth certificate – something every American citizen must provide a copy of to get, among other things, a driver’s license, passport or handgun carry permit. Not only has Obama refused to provide a copy of his original birth certificate, he has also reportedly spent millions of dollars in legal fees trying to prevent its release to the public – that is, assuming he has one.

This reminded me of the African-American woman I wrote about in January who refused to pay her rent, telling the landlord, “We have a new president now and some things are going to change” – and political activist, Donna Brazile, also an African-American, who, when playfully questioned on live television by ABC News anchor, Charles Gibson about whether or not her stealing the fleece blanket from Obama’s chair at his swearing-in ceremony was a felony or misdemeanor, responded: “We have a black president – it’s neither.”

So, I’m left to wonder: Is it because “we have a black president now” that Mr. Obama doesn’t have to provide Americans a copy of his original birth certificate? Legally, it would appear that we don’t really have one until he does – or would that Constitutional requirement also be considered “racial profiling”?

sorry, i had to stop right there anbd back up. because the news is reporting that even the cop and professor agree on several things: among them being the fact that the cop already knew who the homelowner was BEFORE he arrested him. so the guy was not atrrested for refusing to ID himself.

the pig knew damned well who he was when he arrested him. now when the guy told the cop who he was. the cop was done, and should have left. but no, as usual, the control freak pig kook showed to the world his power-starved kook nature.

the racial issue is irrelevant here, to me at least,. the issue is, why did the cop not leave when the guy id'd himself?

as far as the cop not liking the guys attitude, that should not be an arrestable offense.

These pigs and their PR blitz is just one laugh after another. They screwed up big time and they know it. All the PR crap they can possibly spew won't change anything about this.

These pigs know what is going to happen to them and are only trying to frame the argument in terms favorable to them. The pigs are just looking for sympathy from those too stupid to think. I consider it like taking advantage of idiots with Stockholm Syndrome .

By Heather Mac Donald

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TO THE TORTURED subject of racial profiling, a recent study by Northeastern University is said to add new evidence. But does it?

University researchers found small racial disparities in traffic citations issued by 249 Bay State police departments. The findings have been greeted as proof of police bias. This conclusion is at best premature, since the Northeastern study lacks every prerequisite of sound profiling analysis.

To the claim that the police stop 60;too many61; members of any given demographic group, the question must always be: 60;too many61; compared to what? The Northeastern study compares police stop rates to population demographics. If 7 percent of a town’s residents are black, for example, but 8 percent of traffic citations issued by the town’s police are for black drivers, the authors conclude that the police single out drivers on the basis of skin color.

But population is a flawed benchmark for analyzing police actions -- as if police officers are guided by the census rather than by behavior. Crime rates differ across racial and ethnic groups; evidence suggests that driving behavior might, too. A 2001 study of the New Jersey Turnpike, for example, found that black drivers were twice as likely to speed as white drivers, a disparity that increased at speeds above 90 miles per hour. There are many possible explanations for this difference: Black drivers may be more likely to travel long distances on the turnpike, bringing them more frequently into faster left- hand lanes, or the black population on the pike may contain more young males than the white population, raising the number of speeders as well. The Northeastern study makes no effort to determine driving habits among its target groups; it thus has no basis for judging whether police stop rates are disproportionate.

Driving patterns are just the start of valid profiling analysis. Different levels of equipment violations, such as broken taillights and missing vehicle registration tags, must be accounted for as well. Poor people have to defer required repairs more often than the affluent, and poverty is concentrated in minority populations. No word from the Massachusetts study on this factor, however.

Next question: Who’s on the road when? Highway populations can vary wildly according to time of day and day of the week. If more police are on patrol when the proportion of minority drivers is highest -- on weekend nights, for example -- stop rates of those drivers will perforce be higher than the average road population would predict. Northeastern’s method for determining road demographics is laughable -- in most cases extrapolated from such alleged predictors as local restaurant and hotel receipts -- and is no substitute for hour by hour observation of traffic and police deployment.

Most egregiously, the profiling researchers ignore the relationship between community crime rates and police presence. Calls from crime victims bring officers disproportionately into minority neighborhoods, because that is where violence is highest. Responsive commanders will target policing strategies in those same neighborhoods, to protect the most vulnerable residents. A greater police presence in an area usually produces more citations.

A reliable model of police discretion requires many more variables; the Northeastern team does not even hint at them. To now order Massachusetts officers to collect racial data, without developing a valid benchmark for that data, is senseless -- even more so given how minute the disparities measured by the recent study are. Cops will waste countless hours filling out forms that no one knows how to analyze, and they may think twice before stopping minority violators, lest they be accused of racism.

As usual, the ultimate victims of this groundless crusade will be law- abiding members of inner-city neighborhoods, who depend on an energized police force to keep them safe. There may be isolated officers who violate their oath of impartiality, to the disgrace of their profession, but no one has ever produced evidence that the vast majority of cops use skin color, rather than behavior, to determine whom they stop, cite, or arrest. With their every move being analyzed through the prism of race, however, officers may well start to calculate their actions in terms of black and white.

A car with 5 whites and a single black is green lighted ... a car with 5 blacks and a single wigger is RED LIGHTED !!!