How often do minorities feel they are singled out by their race? The panel shows that over half of all black men, a quarter of black women, and 20% of Hispanic and Asian men claim to have been stopped by the police by virtue of their race or ethnicity. The figures come from a survey of 1,709 adults in a poll conducted by the Washington Post, Henry J. Kaiser Foundation, and Harvard University.
There are two sides to the racial profiling issue. Many people argue that singling out people by virtue of race or ethnicity is a very real practice of law enforcement. Others claim that racial profiling is a myth; there is little credible evidence to suggest this practice exists. They may also feel race is just a factor in identifying potential criminals. Those on either side of the issue seem to agree on one thing: that the practice of profiling began during the nation's war on drugs that began in the 1970s. A special agent with the Drug Enforcement Administration developed a typical profile for a drug courier while assigned to the Detroit Metropolitan Airport. Agents were encouraged to consider all aspects of a suspect's behavior: did the suspect carry new luggage or no bags at all? Did he seem nervous? Had he recently visited a country that had been flagged as a producer of heroin or cocaine?
The war on drugs intensified in the 1980s. In 1985, the Drug Enforcement Administration launched Operation Pipeline, a program designed to dismantle the networks that aided in the transporting of drugs to large drug markets. In the program police were trained to recognize evidence of concealment in the vehicle as well as to identify suspicious behavior by the driver. Race began to be unfairly emphasized in the profiling efforts, some activists feel, and black and Hispanic male drivers began to be stopped and detained by police.
Gary Webb points out that the California Highway Patrol described the traffic stops as "intensified enforcement" of traffic laws, or "generating a very high volume of legal traffic enforcement to screen for criminal activity, which may include drug trafficking." As the officer writes tickets or issues warnings, he may determine if the motorist fits a drug courier profile. The driver may then face a search of his vehicle. The stops became so commonplace among people of color that terms "Driving while Black" or "Driving while Brown" were coined to address them.
The "intensified enforcement" policy had an additional benefit for law enforcement. Recently implemented legislation allowed law enforcement to seize the property of suspected drug dealers. According to the Department of Justice, local police departments received $490 million worth of cash, goods, and property from drug asset forfeiture programs during fiscal 1997 (Callahan, Anderson).
In 1998, the Operation Pipeline program came under increasing scrutiny. The Joint Legislative Task Force on Government Oversight began to investigate the Operation Pipeline program in California. It determined that the program's success rate was overstated and that 80 to 90% of arrests since 1991 involved minorities. Roughly 66% of those pulled over were Latino. Motorists were reportedly questioned about their employment, family members, immigration status, criminal histories and use of drugs or alcohol.
The Department of Justice launched an investigation into the Operation Pipeline program in New Jersey. Black motorists told stories similar to those of minority motorists in California: repeatedly being questioned by the police and made to feel like a criminal (particularly if they were driving through predominantly white areas). One example: Dr. Elmo Randolph, a 42 year-old black dentist, who claimed to have been stopped in his gold BMW by the police 50 times between 1991 and 1999. He claims to not drive at excessive speeds and has never been issued a ticket. Police check his license and registration and then quiz him about drugs or weapons in the car.
When New Jersey officials handed over documents, the data on traffic stops was as troubling as the California data. Over a 10 year period, 80% of state highway searches involved black or Latino drivers. In June 1998, 11 black motorists in Maryland filed a federal lawsuit, claiming black drivers were being unfairly targeted along Interstate 95 (a favored route for weapon and drug smuggling). State police claimed to have pulled over twice as many whites as blacks. The plaintiffs countered with numbers of their own: 17% of Maryland drivers are black, yet they comprised 70% of those pulled over. Whites represent 75% of all drivers, yet only 23% of those stopped by the police.
Operation Pipeline — and, presumably, the policy of targeting certain groups of people — has been taught to 27,000 police officers in 48 states, according to law professor David Harris. The media attention brought by these (and other) cases prompted changes in law enforcement policies. More than 20 states now have laws on the books that specifically forbid such practices. As well, many states are now required to collect data on traffic stops to determine if racial profiling is taking place. (Rhode Island police were charged with contempt of court in October 2002 with failing to gather such figures). Law enforcement opposes the push to keep more detailed records of traffic and police stops. Robert Scully, the executive director of the National Association of Police Organizations, fears that record keeping will take "valuable time away from police work to do more administrative work."
The attacks of September 11 have added a new dimension to the debate over racial profiling. Some American Muslims reported being verbally or physically intimidated immediately after the attacks, or, at the very least, viewed with hostility. "Just having a Muslim name like Omar or Ali raises suspicions," stated Shaheen Ahmed, a pathologist in Kansas who was born in India. Suddenly all Muslims or anyone of Arab descent was a potential terrorist. A young man of Lebanese background was asked to leave a Delta Airlines flight in the summer of 2002. The pilot reportedly did not like his looks and told him "I'm not comfortable with you on this flight." The teenager was from Ohio, an honor student and, according to relatives, was so totally American he could barely speak Arabic. Air marshals subdued an unruly passenger at gunpoint on a flight from Atlanta to Philadelphia and told the nervous passengers to remain seated for the rest of the flight. Dr. Bob Rajcoomar was later arrested and questioned because he had reportedly "watched the event too closely." In perhaps the most embarrassing incident, Secret Service agent Walied Shater was kicked off an American Airlines flight on his way to guard the president.
How do the races feel about this method of profiling? In a 1999 Gallup poll, more than half of Americans surveyed believed police actively engage in racial profiling. Eighty-one percent of respondents disapproved of the practice. Not too surprisingly, far more Blacks than whites saw it as pervasive. Has 9/11 changed people's attitudes? In one Atlanta study, 74% of whites and 32% of blacks favored racial profiling in the war against terror.
The Washington Post poll in the graphic above asks minorities if they have been stopped by the police because of their race. This is a question of perception, of course; those who see racial profiling as a myth might argue they could have stopped for some other reason. In a Department of Justice study, 74% of blacks and 82% of Hispanics felt that police had stopped them for legitimate reasons (meaning, of course, that 26% and 18%, respectively, did not). The most common challenge to the idea of racial profiling is that race is just one characteristic used in identifying a potential criminal, not the only one. A report released in April 2002 found that black drivers were more likely to speed on the New Jersey turn-pike than their white counterparts. A few critics have pointed to this controversial report as if to say: could this somehow explain why black drivers found themselves stopped so frequently by the police?
The strangest charge of racial profiling? A Pennsylvania councilwoman has accused her borough's police dog of racial profiling and claims that the canine should be destroyed. The charge came after K-9 officer Schawn Berger was wrestling with a suspect. The dog lunged and ended up biting a 9-year African American boy instead of the suspect. Berger claims the dog simply became confused in the commotion of the struggle. Councilwoman Dixon claims to have received a half dozen complaints against the dog. Three of these people had problems with drugs; the other three were blacks who claimed they were attacked by the dog because of their race. While dogs can certainly be trained to differentiate between the smell of heroin and cocaine, for example, canine experts remain divided as to whether or not the dog would be able to make distinctions between the races.
Sources: Chart data taken from "Racial Profiling Rampant" at State Government News, August 2001, p. 8; U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, Characteristics of Drivers Stopped by Police, 1999; Webb, Gary. California Legislature's Task Force on Government Oversight report on Operation Pipeline retrieved from http://www.aclunc.org/discrimiantion/webb-report.html; Gene Callahan and William Anderson. "The Roots of Racial Profiling." Reason, August 2001, p. 37; "Police Dog Accused of racial profiling." available online at http://www.foxnews.com; "New Jersey releases controversial racial speeding study," available online from http://www.cnn.com; Cynthia Cotts, "New Jersey Cops to Racism." Village Voice, December 6, 2000. "Airline security run amok: terrorism prevention or racial profiling?" available online from http://www.counterpunch.org; Pat Morrison. "American Muslims are Determined Not to Let Hostility Win." National Catholic Reporter, September 6, 2002, p. 9;, p. C1.Alex Tizon. "Black Belt Wrestles with enigma of profiling." Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service, September 10, 2002; "Minorities Targeted for Traffic Stops." Available online from http://www.ndsn.org; "Racial Profiling Data Collection Status Report." Available online from http://www1.ymn.edu/irp/publications/ARB/ARB%20.html; "Opposing Views on Racial Profiling." Insight on the News, July 1999; John Lamberth. "Driving While Black." Washington Post, August 16, 1998, p. C1.
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