RACIAL PROFILING AND BIASED POLICING

Racial Profiling and biased Policing



Racial Profiling and biased Policing

Introduction

Racial profiling, the policeman practice of halting and seeking of blacks because of their rush, in the course of drug-interdiction efforts and tackling misdeed, has become one of the most highly-charged racial matters in America. However, this topic that divides our nation along black and white lines should not be an topic at all. Racial profiling is not anything more than a shrewd police technique where policeman employ the regulations of likelihood to make the best use of their scarce assets in attacking crime. The trafficking of drugs and tools for fighting, and the effects these pieces have on the groups they end up in, has become a difficulty that plagues the nation as a whole. It is for this reason, and the loud cry of the citizens in these communities, that the federal government now funds a $37 billion "War on Drugs" that started during the Reagan presidency. While everyone agrees that drugs and weapons need to be cleaned off the streets of our country, most people seem to disagree that this should come as a result of police officers "playing the odds." The deterrence of crime that racial profiling has created in recent years and the holes in the arguments against it substantiate this practice as both effective and necessary.

Discussion

John Derbyshire wrote an article in National Review that stated "a policeman who concentrates a disproportionate amount of his limited time and resources on young black men is going to uncover far more crimes - and therefore be far more successful in his career - than one who biases his attention toward, say, middle-aged Asian women." It is this probability that the true form of racial profiling is based on. This is not to say that blind racism never occurs in law enforcement, because it does as in all things. However, true racial profiling uses race as one of the many factors in gauging criminal suspiciousness, not the only one. This, then, discredits the claim by many opponents of racial profiling that say police officers are taught to pull-over, search, and interrogate individuals because of their skin color. Instead, as shown through the Drug Enforcement Agency's instructions to law enforcement officials, police are taught some common identifying signs of drug couriers: "nervousness; conflicting information about origin and destination cities among vehicle occupants; no luggage for a long trip; lots of cash; lack of a driver's license or insurance; the spare tire in the back seat; rental license plates or plates from key source states like Arizona and New Mexico; loose screws or scratches near a vehicle's hollow spaces, which can be converted to hiding places for drugs and guns," (Mac Donald).

It is also partially due to the formal practice of racial profiling in police departments that has caused the reduction of crime by 20 percent in the past five years, (Goldberg 56). While many people assail statistics that show African-Americans and Hispanics as the highest incident ...