PeteFree.comEnding Racial Profiling - Footnotes
© 2002 Peter Free
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Appendix B ─ Appendix C ─ Appendix D ─ Appendix E
Footnotes
* Peter Free is a former career law enforcement officer and supervisor. He wrote the training and emergency operations manuals for his department. He supervised training at various times and has significant experience as a patrol officer, detective and watch commander.
[1] Racial profiling uses race and ethnicity as a factor in building reasonable suspicion or probable cause to stop someone. Profiling assumes that a list of characteristics can alert police to the fact that someone may be committing or about to commit a crime. The technique claims to achieve at least the level of reasonable suspicion required to make an investigative stop.
There are broader definitions of profiling. Two examples:
(1) Katheryn Russell defines racial profiling as "the use of race as either the sole factor, or one of several factors, by a law enforcement official to stop, search, or arrest a motorist." Katheryn K. Russell, Racial Profiling: A Status Report of the Legal, Legislative, and Empirical Literature, 3 RUTGERS RACE & L. REV. 61, 68.
Russell's definition embraces the reality of racist bias among police, but it is too broad to be useful. It minimizes the unconscious elements that go into discrimination by assuming that some police do use race alone to justify detention and arrest. No modern law enforcement professional would ever agree that race alone is legitimate reason to stop, much less arrest, someone. To do so, would be to become consciously aware that lawlessness has invaded the profession.
Instead, it's probably fair to say that the overwhelming majority of police think of race, under certain circumstances, as a legitimate consideration in effecting reasonable suspicion stops. Many are unconscious of the fact that race/ethnicity, as they use it, overwhelms other factors in their reasonable suspicion calculus. In revealing this unconscious bias, it is important to define racial profiling in a way that retains multiple factors of suspicion. Only then does it become clear that race has no logical relevance to behavioral characteristics that do generate legitimate suspicion in ordinary policing.
(2) The U. S. Department of Justice has described racial profiling "as any police-initiated action that relies on the race, ethnicity, or national origin rather than the behavior of an individual or information that leads the police to a particular individual who has been identified as being, or having been, engaged in criminal activity." DEBORAH RAMIREZ, JACK McDEVITT, AMY FARRELL, A RESOURCE GUIDE ON RACIAL PROFILING DATA COLLECTION SYSTEMS: PROMISING PRACTICES AND LESSONS LEARNED 3 (November 2000) (visited Mar. 12, 2002) <http://www.ncjrs.org/pdfiles1/bja/184768.pdf>. This definition, too, is too broad to be useful.
[2] See, e.g., Ira Glasser, American Drug Laws: The New Jim Crow, The 1999 Edward C. Sobota Lecture, 63 ALB. L. REV. 703 (2000; DAVID A. HARRIS, DRIVING WHILE BLACK: RACIAL PROFILING ON OUR NATION'S HIGHWAYS, AN AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION SPECIAL REPORT (June 1999) (visited Mar. 2, 2002) <http://www.aclu.org/profiling/report/>; David A. Harris, The Stories, The Statistics, and the Law: Why "Driving While Black" Matters, 84 MINN. L. REV. 265 (December 1999); Tracey Maclin, The Fourth Amendment on the Freeway, 3 RUTGERS RACE & L. REV. 117 (2001); Kevin R. Johnson, The Case for African American and Lina/o Cooperation in Challenging Race Profiling in Law Enforcement (2002) (unpublished manuscript, on file with the author); Katheryn K. Russell, Racial Profiling: A Status Report of the Legal, Legislative, and Empirical Literature, 3 RUTGERS RACE & L. REV. 61 (2001); David Rudovsky, Law Enforcement by Stereotypes and Serendipity: Racial Profiling and Stops and Searches Without Cause, 3 U. PA. J. CONST. L. 296 (February 2001); Reginald T. Shuford, Civil Rights in the Next Millennium: Any Way You Slice It: Why Racial Profiling Is Wrong, 18 ST. LOUIS U. PUB. L. REV. 371 (1999); and George C. Thomas III, Blinded by the Light: How to Deter Racial Profiling—Thinking about Remedies, 3 RUTGERS RACE 7 L. REV. 39 (2001).
[3] See Appendix A for a discussion of how the evolution of racial profiling illustrates the costs of mindless, single-focus law enforcement.
[4] See Appendix B.
[5] See Tracey Maclin, The Fourth Amendment on the Freeway, 3 RUTGERS RACE & L. REV. 117 (2001).
[6] John Douard, Racial Profiling: A New Road Hazard, 3 RUTGERS RACE & L. REV. 1, 2 (2001).
[7] Reasonable suspicion is difficult to pin down absent concrete examples. The Supreme Court considers it to exist when an officer has "reasonable suspicion to believe that criminal activity may be afoot...{There must be] some objective manifestation that the person stopped is, or is about to be, engaged in criminal activity." United States v. Arvizu, 122 S. Ct. 744, 750 (2002) (quoting United States v. Cortez, 449 U.S. 411, 417 (1981)).
[8] Probable cause exists where circumstances are sufficient to warrant a reasonably cautious person's belief that an offense is being committed. Brinegar v. United States, 338 U.S. 160, 175-76 (1949).
[9] Pretext stops use the probable cause created by a violation, usually of traffic law, to justify stopping someone for purposes other than correction of that violation. Pretext stops, therefore, substitute probable cause for an unrelated violation for the reasonable suspicion used to directly legitimate investigative detentions.
[10] Third Watch ran from 9:00 PM to 7:30 AM.
[11] This balancing of options and evils is typical of police patrol work. It goes on continually.
[12] Academics often frown on "hunches," "instincts," and "gut" feelings. In my case, my gut saved my life a few times. Similarly, it often reliably detected who meant me no harm—even when they were pointing a gun at me. Many officers have similar stories. A street cop’s world is uncertain. This sixth sense is valuable. It characterizes many of the people who have the confidence and the courage to wear the uniform.
[13] See, e.g., Ira Glasser, American Drug Laws: The New Jim Crow, The 1999 Edward C. Sobota Lecture, 63 ALB. L. REV. 703 (2000; DAVID A. HARRIS, DRIVING WHILE BLACK: RACIAL PROFILING ON OUR NATION'S HIGHWAYS, AN AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION SPECIAL REPORT (June 1999) (visited Mar. 2, 2002) <http://www.aclu.org/profiling/report/>; David A. Harris, The Stories, The Statistics, and the Law: Why "Driving While Black" Matters, 84 MINN. L. REV. 265 (December 1999); Tracey Maclin, The Fourth Amendment on the Freeway, 3 RUTGERS RACE & L. REV. 117 (2001); Kevin R. Johnson, The Case for African American and Latina/o Cooperation in Challenging Race Profiling in Law Enforcement (2002) (unpublished manuscript, on file with the author); Katheryn K. Russell, Racial Profiling: A Status Report of the Legal, Legislative, and Empirical Literature, 3 RUTGERS RACE & L. REV. 61 (2001); David Rudovsky, Law Enforcement by Stereotypes and Serendipity: Racial Profiling and Stops and Searches Without Cause, 3 U. PA. J. CONST. L. 296 (February 2001); Reginald T. Shuford, Civil Rights in the Next Millennium: Any Way You Slice It: Why Racial Profiling Is Wrong, 18 ST. LOUIS U. PUB. L. REV. 371 (1999); and George C. Thomas III, Blinded by the Light: How to Deter Racial Profiling—Thinking about Remedies, 3 RUTGERS RACE 7 L. REV. 39 (2001).
[14] See Appendix C for a discussion of the nature of reasonable suspicion and the Supreme Court's rejection of the Ninth Circuit's attempt to dissect Totality of Circumstances analysis so that it might curb police discretion.
[15] Immigration enforcement may be an exception to this statement. Given the nuanced (and arguably bigoted) treatment the Supreme Court has given border protection, I do not address immigration enforcement in this paper.
[16] Brinegar v. United States, 338 U.S. 160, 175-76 (1949).
[17] Some writers use the term “pretext stop” to include stops made without legal justification. The officer lies about what actually happened. These stops are illegal, always have been illegal, and have no relationship to racial profiling other than that minorities are almost certainly subject to more lying on the part of the police than the majority group. Lying has nothing to do with inappropriately applied Constitutional standards. It can have a great deal to do with racial bigotry. Seen this way, there are two issues in racial profiling. The first concerns officers who target racial groups but nevertheless accord with Constitutional standards governing reasonable suspicion and probable cause. The second concerns officers who target racial groups and exercise no legitimate standard in initiating the stop. The second problem is clearly worse. Correction of both revolves around asking who becomes an officer, how is she trained and supervised, and what recourse wronged people should have.
[18] Whren v. United States, 517 U.S. 806 (1996). The issue was very clearly defined. In this case we decide whether the temporary detention of a motorist who the police have probable cause to believe has committed a civil traffic violation is inconsistent with the Fourth Amendment's prohibition against unreasonable seizures unless a reasonable officer would have been motivated to stop the car by a desire to enforce the traffic laws. Id. at 808.
[24] The anecdote in Part I illustrated this point.
[25] Id. at 818-19. The anecdote and the questions that follow it in Part I of this paper should illustrate why the Court elected not to enter the morass presented by this issue.
[27] The usual answers to these questions are that (a) society fears violent street crime, (b) police like to play cowboys and Indians, (c) politicians like to target crime that everyone can see, and (d) minority groups don't have the political clout to protect themselves.
[28] Notice that this would not have had any impact in the anecdote in Part I.
[29] See Peter Free, Stop and Frisk Gun Reduction Breeds Disguised Harms (2001).
[30] Eliot Spitzer, Attorney General of the State of New York, The New York City Police Department's "Stop and Frisk" Practices: A Report of the People of the State of New York from The Office of the Attorney General 47 (December 1, 1999) <http://www.oag.state.ny.us/press/reports/stop_frisk/stop_frisk.html>.
[37] Timothy Lynch, "We Own the Night" Amadou Diallo's Deadly Encounter with New York City's Street Crimes Unit, 56 CATO INSTITUTE BRIEFING PAPERS 6 (March 31, 2000).
[39] See Peter Free, Stop and Frisk Gun Reduction Breeds Disguised Harms 9-10 (2001).
[40] Timothy Lynch, "We Own the Night" Amadou Diallo's Deadly Encounter with New York City's Street Crimes Unit, 56 CATO INSTITUTE BRIEFING PAPERS 6 (March 31, 2000).
[41] Eliot Spitzer, Attorney General of the State of New York, The New York City Police Department's "Stop and Frisk" Practices: A Report of the People of the State of New York from The Office of the Attorney General (December 1, 1999) <http://www.oag.state.ny.us/press/reports/stop_frisk/stop_frisk.html>.
[42] United States Commission on Civil Rights, Racial and Ethnic Tensions in American Communities: Poverty, Inequality and Discrimination Volume V: The Lost Angeles Report, Chapter 7: Findings and Recommendations, Sec. 6.4 (visited Nov. 21, 2001) <http://www.uscr.gov/la/main.htm>.
[43] Most traffic units will admit that they select some of the streets they focus on by the volume of complaints from people living and working nearby. It's no accident that uniformed officers often work in school zones, despite the fact that children are hardly ever killed or injured there, even when police are absent.
[44] This point is ably made by George Kelling. He has written that police administrators are inattentive to the substantive content of ordinary policing. He attributes this deficiency to (1) oversimplified crime fighting ideas; (2) simple-minded slogans like "war on crime" and "thin blue line" and a corresponding media/political aversion to hearing about the real world; (3) politicians, jealous of their prerogatives in making policy, who are unwilling to consider law enforcement contributions in that regard; and (4) a government and a public that fails to understand the complexity of many law enforcement related problems. GEORGE L. KELLING, "BROKEN WINDOWS' AND POLICE DISCRETION: NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF JUSTICE RESEARCH REPORT 2 (October 1999).
Kelling goes on to recommend that police departments must take a new approach to training and administration. They must [I have taken the liberty of interjecting more precise words]:
(1) Recognize the complexity of police work.
(2) Acknowledge the use of police discretion.
(3) Recognize and confirm how police is really conducted.
(4) Advance a pertinent set of policing values.
(5) Make plain existing relevant research, facts, and data.
(6) Develop policing methods with input from officers and citizens.
(7) Promulgate findings in a clear way.
(8) Include rules about what officers should not do.
(9) Emphasize police adherence to process, rather than to the illusion of predictable outcomes.
(10) Establish accountability standards. Id. at 34.
[45] Accurate evaluations are vital to honorable law enforcement. For example, in New York and Los Angeles, evaluations of violent and corrupt officers were bland. Paul Chevigny writes that this was due to (a) supervisors not knowing what police were doing, (b) civil service protections afforded all officers, good and bad; (c) the need to retain the good will of the rank and file; and (d) the effect of shared police values. PAUL CHEVIGNY, EDGE OF THE KNIFE: POLICE VIOLENCE IN THE AMERICAS 80 (1995).
[46] See Appendix E for a discussion of why line officers distrust administrators.
[47] See Appendix B.
[48] Katheryn K. Russell, Racial Profiling: A Status Report of the Legal, Legislative, and Empirical Literature, 3 RUTGERS RACE & L. REV. 61, 68 (2001).
[50] Id. at 70. California's statute requires that its law enforcement officers "shall not engage in racial profiling." The state requires racial/multicultural police training with refresher courses every five years. A five person panel directs the training curriculum. Panel members are selected from prominent representatives of the NAACP, Brotherhood Crusade, Mexican American legal Defense and Education Fund, the League of United Latin American Citizens, the America Civil Liberties Union, Anti-Defamation League, California NOW, Asian Pacific Bar of California, and the Urban League. The law directs the state Legislative Analyst to study racial profiling data voluntarily being collected by the California Highway Patrol and the San Diego and San Jose Police Departments. Cal. Penal Code 13519.4.
[51] Brandon Garrett, Remedying Racial Profiling, 33 COLUM. HUMAN RIGHTS L. REV. 41, 82 (Fall 2001).
[53] DEBORAH RAMIREZ, JACK McDEVITT, AMY FARRELL, A RESOURCE GUIDE ON RACIAL PROFILING DATA COLLECTION SYSTEMS: PROMISING PRACTICES AND LESSONS LEARNED 14-15 (November 2000) (visited Mar. 12, 2002) <http://www.ncjrs.org/pdfiles1/bja/184768.pdf>.
[54] See Appendix E for a discussion of why police are suspicious of data collection efforts.
[55] See Appendix D.
[56] Only one state requires the collection of pedestrian data. Brandon Garrett, Remedying Racial Profiling, 33 COLUM. HUMAN RIGHTS L. REV. 41, 84 (Fall 2001).
[57] As a street officer, I often used DMV information to obtain pieces of necessary information that I had either forgotten to get or had elected not to ask for reasons of courtesy.
[58] Brandon Garrett, Remedying Racial Profiling, 33 COLUM. HUMAN RIGHTS L. REV. 41, 91 (Fall 2001).
[59] See Sean Hecker, Race and Pretextual Traffic Stops: An Expanded Role for Civilian Review Boards, 28 COLUM. HUMAN RIGHTS L. REV. 551, 593-605 (Spring 1997).
[65] Brandon Garrett, Remedying Racial Profiling, 33 COLUM. HUMAN RIGHTS L. REV. 41, 107-111 (Fall 2001).
[69] Samuel Walker and Carol Archbold, Mediating Citizen Complaints against the Police: An Exploratory Study, 2000 J. DISP. RESO. 231, 235 (2000).
[75] Based on my personal experience with informal mediation in police work.
[76] See Brandon Garrett, Remedying Racial Profiling, 33 COLUM. HUMAN RIGHTS L. REV. 41, 125-26 (Fall 2001).
[77] My department trained citizen observers on how to stay safe, then sent them out with a plainclothes escort to observe how we handled violent demonstrations occurring in our jurisdiction. In later critiques, they complimented the department on its restraint. They made useful suggestions we incorporated into our practice. Overall, the citizen reviewers increased the level of trust between our department and a sometimes highly critical multiracial/multicultural community.
[78] One of the most meaningful moments of my career came when rape crisis and victim witness advocates rated our department with "A"s for our consistently professional and sensitive handling of their respective clients. No other department in the county received scores of that caliber. The results were published in local newspapers.
[79] See, e.g., Ira Glasser, American Drug Laws: The New Jim Crow, The 1999 Edward C. Sobota Lecture, 63 ALB. L. REV. 703 (2000; DAVID A. HARRIS, DRIVING WHILE BLACK: RACIAL PROFILING ON OUR NATION'S HIGHWAYS, AN AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION SPECIAL REPORT (June 1999) (visited Mar. 2, 2002) <http://www.aclu.org/profiling/report/>; David A. Harris, The Stories, The Statistics, and the Law: Why "Driving While Black" Matters, 84 MINN. L. REV. 265 (December 1999); Tracey Maclin, The Fourth Amendment on the Freeway, 3 RUTGERS RACE & L. REV. 117 (2001); Kevin R. Johnson, The Case for African American and Latina/o Cooperation in Challenging Race Profiling in Law Enforcement (2002) (unpublished manuscript, on file with the author); Katheryn K. Russell, Racial Profiling: A Status Report of the Legal, Legislative, and Empirical Literature, 3 RUTGERS RACE & L. REV. 61 (2001); David Rudovsky, Law Enforcement by Stereotypes and Serendipity: Racial Profiling and Stops and Searches Without Cause, 3 U. PA. J. CONST. L. 296 (February 2001); Reginald T. Shuford, Civil Rights in the Next Millennium: Any Way You Slice It: Why Racial Profiling Is Wrong, 18 ST. LOUIS U. PUB. L. REV. 371 (1999); and George C. Thomas III, Blinded by the Light: How to Deter Racial Profiling—Thinking about Remedies, 3 RUTGERS RACE 7 L. REV. 39 (2001).
[80] Katheryn K. Russell, Racial Profiling: A Status Report of the Legal, Legislative, and Empirical Literature, 3 RUTGERS RACE & L. REV. 61, 73 (2001) (citing David Harris, Driving While Black and All Other Traffic Offenses: The Supreme Court and Pretextual Traffic Stops, 87 J. CRIM. L. & CRIMINOLOGY 544, 561-63 (1997)). See also, Sean Hecker, Race and Pretextual Traffic Stops: An Expanded Role for Civilian Review Board, 28 COLUM. HUMAN RIGHTS L. REV. 551, 560 (Spring 1997).
[81] DEBORAH RAMIREZ, JACK McDEVITT, AMY FARRELL, A RESOURCE GUIDE ON RACIAL PROFILING DATA COLLECTION SYSTEMS: PROMISING PRACTICES AND LESSONS LEARNED 6-8 (November 2000) (visited Mar. 12, 2002) <http://www.ncjrs.org/pdfiles1/bja/184768.pdf>.
[82] Id. at 10. In Maryland, 28.8 percent of white drivers/passengers searched had contraband; 28.4 percent of African Americans did. In New Jersey, arrest/seizure rates affected 10.5 percent of whites and 13.5 percent of African Americans. In New York City, "stop and frisk" tactics led to the arrests of 12.6 percent of whites, 11.3 percent of Latinos, and 10.5 percent of African Americans despite much higher contact rates for the minority groups.
[83] New Jersey v. Soto, 734 A.2d 350, 355 (1996).
[84] David Kocieniewski, Study Suggests Racial Gap in Speeding in New Jersey, N.Y. TIMES 1 (Mar. 20, 2002).
[85] Bureau of Justice Statistics, Summary Findings, in PRISON STATISTICS (visited Mar. 16, 2002) <http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/prisons.htm>.
[86] EILEEN POE-YAMAGATA and MICHAEL A. JONES, AND JUSTICE FOR SOME 21 (2000) (visited Mar. 2, 2002) <http://www.buildingblocksforyouth.org/justiceforsome/authors.html>.
[88] Building Blocks for Youth, LATINO YOUTH IN THE JUVENILE JUSTICE SYSTEM: FACT SHEET (visited Mar. 2, 2002) <http://www. buildingblocksforyouth.org/issues/latino/facts.html>.
[89] See Frank H. Wu, The Profiling of Threat Versus The Threat of Profiling, 7 MICH. J. RACE & L. 135 (Fall 2001) (an elegant explanation of how unanalyzed statistics lend illusory support profiling).
[90] Ira Glasser, American Drug Laws: The New Jim Crow, The 1999 Edward C. Sobota Lecture, 63 ALB. L. REV. 703, 721 (2000).
[91] Stephen E. Hall, A Balancing Approach to the Constitutionality of Drug Courier Profiles, 1993 U. ILL. L. REV. 1007, 1009 (1993). This accords with the author's personal knowledge as of the beginning of his police career in 1977.
[94] See, inter alia, Sean Hecker, Race and Pretextual Traffic Stops: An Expanded Role for Civilian ReviewBoards, 28 COLUM. HUMAN RIGHTS L. REV. 551, 558-66 (Spring 1997).
[95] Stephen E. Hall, A Balancing Approach to the Constitutionality of Drug Courier Profiles, 1993 U. ILL. L. REV. 1007, 1009 (1993). This accords with the author's personal knowledge as of the beginning of his police career in 1977.
[97] Id. at 1011. Hall uses the example of suspicion being drawn by being the first, last, or in the middle of passengers exiting a plane. Id. at 1011-1012.
[99] Irene Day, Drug Courier Profiles: An Infringement on Fourth Amendment Rights, 28 U. BALT. L. F. 3, 4 (Summer 1998).
[102] The reality is that if criminals all do come from one easily identifiable group, that's where the law enforcement focus will be, regardless of demands to the contrary. No one looks where the problem isn't. The problem (arguably) for today's interdiction [in 2002] of terrorists on airplanes is that it sweeps too broadly, is too intrusive, and oppresses the many in order to catch a vanishingly small number of the few.
[103] United States v. Arvizu, 122 S. Ct. 744, 750 (2002) (citing United States v. Brignoni-Ponce, 422 U.S. 873, 878 (1975)).
[104] Id. at 750 (internal quotation marks omitted) (citing United States v. Sokolow, 490 U.S. 1, 7 (1989)).
[105] Id. at 750 (quoting United States v. Cortez, 449 U.S. 411, 417 (1981).
[107] Id. at 753 (citing Illinois v. Wardlow, 528 U.S. 119, 125 (2000).
[109] United States v. Arvizu, 232 F.3d 1241 (9th Cir. 2000).
[110] United States v. Arvizu, 122 S. Ct. 744, 750 (2002).
[111] "The [Ninth Circuit] court appeared to believe that each observation by Stoddard that was by itself readily susceptible to an innocent explanation was entitled to 'no weight.' See 232 F.3d at 1249-1251. Terry [Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1 (1968)], however, precludes this sort of divide-and-conquer analysis." Id. at 751.
[113] United States v. Arvizu, 232 F.3d 1241 (9th Cir. 2000).
[117] United States v. Arvizu, 122 S. Ct. 744, 751 (2002).
[120] These comments are based on the author’s experience as a training supervisor and watch commander.
[121] DEBORAH RAMIREZ, JACK McDEVITT, AMY FARRELL, A RESOURCE GUIDE ON RACIAL PROFILING DATA COLLECTION SYSTEMS: PROMISING PRACTICES AND LESSONS LEARNED 18-20 (November 2000) (visited Mar. 12, 2002) <http://www.ncjrs.org/pdfiles1/bja/184768.pdf>.
[129] This point is ably made by George Kelling. He has written that police administrators are inattentive to the substantive content of ordinary policing. He attributes this deficiency to (1) oversimplified crime fighting ideas; (2) simple-minded slogans like "war on crime" and "thin blue line" and a corresponding media/political aversion to hearing about the real world; (3) politicians, jealous of their prerogatives in making policy, who are unwilling to consider law enforcement contributions in that regard; and (4) a government and a public that fails to understand the complexity of many law enforcement related problems. GEORGE L. KELLING, "BROKEN WINDOWS' AND POLICE DISCRETION: NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF JUSTICE RESEARCH REPORT 2 (October 1999).
Kelling goes on to recommend that police departments must take a new approach to training and administration. They must [I have taken the liberty of interjecting more precise words]:
(1) Recognize the complexity of police work.
(2) Acknowledge the use of police discretion.
(3) Recognize and confirm how police is really conducted.
(4) Advance a pertinent set of policing values.
(5) Make plain existing relevant research, facts, and data.
(6) Develop policing methods with input from officers and citizens.
(7) Promulgate findings in a clear way.
(8) Include rules about what officers should not do.
(9) Emphasize police adherence to process, rather than to the illusion of predictable outcomes.
(10) Establish accountability standards. Id. at 34.
[130] Wisely used discretion is the heart of policing. Experienced street cops know this, although they may be unable to articulate it.
[131] Police are subjected to more scrutiny than the majority of professional groups. Despite media accounts of long-standing gross misbehavior, most officers working in the more progressive jurisdictions operate in environments where there are always witnesses whom their administrators will take seriously. Additionally, each police action subjects the officer to the possibility of a lawsuit as well as administrative correction. Neither event is pleasant and both often take months of being under the gun to resolve. Each chaotic street situation the officer enters raises the possibility of injury to someone. Each action taken or avoided raises the likelihood of criticism from peers and supervisors. Ultimately, each police day is about extreme uncertainty. When police object to yet another way of being "screwed," they have good cause.
Consequently, in combating bigotry, it is necessary to persuade officers that bigotry is unconscious and part of their professional mission is to eradicate its effect on their day-to-day police activities. If we sell the harm done by racism/ethnocentrism and clean up administration’s lazy penchant for scapegoating, officers will provide the racial data collection required to document disparate contact and arrest rates. My experience indicated that even bigots could be good cops. Aware of their biases, they were able to compensate for them in their work. The key was a department that didn't tolerate racism or ethnic bias.
(This is the Footnotes page)
Go to: Page 1 ─ Page 2 ─ Page 3 ─ Page 4 ─ Appendix A
Appendix B ─ Appendix C ─ Appendix D ─ Appendix E