If asked in a poll, most Americans — especially in these recent racially charged months — would probably say they are against racial profiling.
If asked in a poll, most Americans, however, would probably say they favor profiling. For instance, they would want a suspected rapist described as a tall, thin white teenager wearing a Linkin Park T-shirt stopped and arrested if seen near the scene of the crime. Or if the suspect was a carjacker characterized as a young black man with a red cap and a black hoodie. Or if the perpetrator was a suspected murderer said to be a short Hispanic man with a crew cut and a jeans jacket.
Most people of all races don’t understand the difference between profiling and racial profiling.
Indeed, the words “racial profiling” have been thrown around by the national media and those in the professional race business so often following the Michael Brown shooting in Ferguson, Mo., in August that it’s a wonder anyone can understand what it is and what it isn’t.
Racial profiling is the use of a person’s race or ethnicity as the primary reason to suspect that person has broken the law. Profiling is the use of various descriptions of a criminal suspect to help track down the suspect.
The problem is the difference between profiling and racial profiling can be narrow.
The Chattanooga Police Department (CPD), as part of its policy since 2006, notes that “profiling, in itself, can be a useful tool to assist law enforcement officers in carrying out their duties” but states that “the use of bias based profiling by members of the Chattanooga Police Department is prohibited in all traffic contacts, field contacts and in asset seizure and forfeiture efforts. Members must have reasonable suspicion supported by specific articulated facts that a person detained regarding identification, activity or location has been, is, or is about to commit a crime or is currently presenting a threat to the safety of themselves or others.”
In 2013, despite the fact they represent only 34.9 percent of the population, blacks represented 60.6 percent of arrests by the department. Yet, in an annual reviewed supplied by the department, the CPD did not have cause to open any internal affairs investigations relating to bias based profiling/harassment.
Police work will never be a zero-sum game. So if there is a perfect solution on how to leave race out of the picture when patrolling in a minority community, when searching for a suspect described by ethnicity, or when someone is observed acting suspiciously, it has yet to be divined.
Even far left U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor admitted as much in 2013, saying investigators have to pay attention to some “indicators” about suspects.
“It’s a fine line society walks in trying to be fair,” she said.
Tennessee state Sen. Brian Kelsey, R-Germantown, and state Rep. John DeBerry, D-Memphis, filed a bill last week to be proposed in the General Assembly next year that would force all state law enforcement agencies to adopt written policies to ban racial profiling.
Kelsey said in a news release the measure is in response to the Brown shooting and the demonstrations that followed the grand jury decision not to indict Officer Darren Wilson. However, as was proven by testimony before the grand jury, racial profiling had nothing to do with Wilson’s stop of Brown.
“Whether you agree with the decision in Ferguson or not,” Kelsey said in the news release, “we should all agree that racial profiling has no place in law enforcement in our state.”
The Tennessee Highway Patrol already has a policy against bias-based profiling, and Robert Weaver, the president of the Nashville chapter of the Fraternal Order of Police, says his organization doesn’t support it, either.
“We arrest or stop people who are violating the law,” he told the Nashville Tennessean. “That whole false premise is that ‘Well, if a group is stopped higher than their percentage of the population, it must mean that there’s racial profiling.’ That’s just not a sound basis in fact.”
Because of the fine line between profiling and racial profiling that hysteria over a specific incident could blur, because there is no demonstrated problem with racial profiling in state law enforcement agencies and because many agencies already have such policies, such a bill, while well intended, is probably unnecessary.