Why racial profiling is necessary

It alienates communities from law enforcement, hinders community policing efforts, and causes law enforcement to lose credibility and trust among the people they are sworn to protect and serve.

We rely on the police to protect us from harm and promote fairness and justice in our communities. But racial profiling has led countless people to live in fear, casting entire communities as suspect simply because of what they look like, where they come from, or what religion they adhere to.

Racial profiling affects a wide array of communities of color. At times, the sheriffs would even release black suspects to the lynch mobs. A recent example would be the complaint by an African American man in Maryland, who after moving into a white community, was attacked and subjected to property damage. Local police failed to respond to his repeated complaints until they arrested him for shooting his gun into the air, trying to disperse a hostile mob outside his home.

Many racial profiling victims walk away with traffic tickets, but too often for others the outcome of racial profiling is death. Pennsylvania Brentwood - On October 12, , Jonny Gammage, a 31 year-old African American male, was killed after being pulled over while driving the Jaguar of his cousin, Pittsburgh Steelers football player Ray Seals, in a predominately white community.

Although police claimed that Gammage initiated the struggle, a tow truck driver said he saw one officer start the fight and the others join in kicking, hitting and clubbing Gammage while he lay on the pavement. Three officers were tried for involuntary manslaughter: John Vojtas was acquitted; Lt. Milton Mulholland and Michael Albert had their charges dismissed after two mistrials. All four were members of the New York City Police Department's Street Crimes Unit, which, under the slogan, "We Own the Night," used aggressive "stop and frisk" tactics against African Americans at a rate double that group's population percentage.

A report on the unit by the state attorney general found that blacks were stopped at a rate 10 times that of whites, and that 35 percent of those stops lacked reasonable suspicion to detain or had reports insufficiently filled out to make a determination.

Thousands attended Diallo's funeral. Demonstrations were held almost daily, along with the arrests of over 1, people in planned civil disobedience. In a trial that was moved out of the community where Diallo lived and to Albany in upstate New York, the four officers who killed Diallo were acquitted of all charges. Thomas had 14 outstanding misdemeanor warrants, mostly traffic violations, including failure to wear a seat belt.

According to a city councilman, he was running away, holding up his baggy pants, and scaled a fence, landing in a driveway where Roach was approaching and shot Thomas. He became the fifth black male in the city to die at the hands of police in a five-month period and the fifteenth since Two nights of protests left broken windows at City Hall and fires around the city.

Witnesses reported that following Thomas' funeral, six city SWAT team officers shot pellet-filled bags into a peaceful crowd. Two people hit by the pellets filed lawsuits. Under community and city council pressure, both the public safety director and city manager resigned. Officer Roach was indicted on charges of negligent homicide, and obstructing official business, resulting from differences in his version of events. A community coalition, the Cincinnati Black United Front and the ACLU of Ohio filed suit against the city and the Fraternal Order of Police, citing a pattern and practice of discrimination by police, including issuing the type of traffic citations Thomas received to African Americans at twice their population percentage.

In April the case was settled, under terms including the establishment of a civilian complaint review board and the activation of the reporting of collected traffic stop data that had been enacted by city ordinance in The Department of Justice also intervened and settled with the city, including revision and review of use of force policy. It is significant to note that research confirms the existence of bias in decisions to shoot.

The stories above and hundreds of others present a compelling argument that not only does racial profiling exists, but it is widespread, and has had a destructive effect on the lives of communities of color, and attitudes toward police. Asians, who, according to the U. Wen Ho Lee, a Taiwanese American was targeted and suspected of espionage on the basis of his race. In , a New Jersey Superior Court judge dismissed the lawsuit. The incident in "Driving While Black" demonstrates that racial profiling does occur, but lawmakers and courts have had some difficulty controlling its influence.

Such searches sometimes result in arrests if drugs or weapons are discovered, but they have become a controversial law-enforcement technique, even when such searches do not involve incidents of racial profiling. However, the frequency with which racial profiling occurs against minorities has spurred civil liberties and CIVIL RIGHTS groups to demand stricter limitations on when officers may request a vehicle search.

New Jersey has remained in the national spotlight with respect to incidents of racial profiling. Former New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman and the state attorney general admitted that New Jersey state police had engaged in racial profiling. In a decision in , the New Jersey Supreme Court made the policy a mandatory requirement under the Constitution of New Jersey for all law enforcement officers in the state.

Other states have made similar concessions. The settlement included an agreement by the Maryland police to enact sweeping changes to.

The ACLU has targeted other state law enforcement offices as well. The United States has a history of racial profiling, and, in some cases, the incidents were particularly egregious. And as a minority, I abhor police injustices to any race of people. Our government is in the process of attempting to track down those responsible for the Sept.

There are some who would love to hinder this investigation by throwing in as many roadblocks as possible. There are others whose only agenda is race and they see racism under every rock. All Sections.

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