Blue Mass Group

Reality-based commentary on politics.

“Racial Profiling Is Alive And Well”

By

This incident itself is an opening to the issue of racial profiling.  Here are links to information about two other recent, prominent cases:

http://www.aclum.org/news/2007…

http://www.aclum.org/docket/va…

The first involves the 2003 unlawful detention of King Downing — ironically, a national expert on racial profiling — at Logan Airport.

The second involves Jason Vassell, an African-American former UMass Amherst student who faces charges much more serious than the two white men who attacked Vassell in his dorm in February 2008.

Please share widely!
fb-share-icon
Tweet
0

Comments

  1. Racial profiling defined:

    <

    p>

    the consideration of race when developing a profile of suspected criminals; by extension, a form of racism involving police focus on people of certain racial groups when seeking suspected criminals

    <

    p>Here is a case where an officer is responding to a call from a citizen about 2 black males who were breaking into a house.  Nobody needed to develop a profile.  It was there in plain site.  Two black males.   Are you suggesting that the police officer should have ignored the call because the caller mentioned they were black?  Should the caller herself have dismissed the actions because they were black?  

    <

    p>Where is the profiling?  Show me the money.  

      • Abraham talks with breezy assurance about an incident that occurred without her presence, about which accounts of the participants sharply differ.

        <

        p>

        When he sees you at ease, chatting on a cordless phone, does the Cambridge police officer conclude things look OK? Does he take note of the fact that you make no attempt to run, as a robber might? Does he say anything like this? “We got a call, sir. We’re just making sure everything’s OK. Have a lovely day, sir.”

        Most certainly not. Instead, he goes into your home with his radio and his gun in the middle of the day and acts as if he’s dealing with some perp in a back alley at 3 a.m

        <

        p>If Abaraham were up-front that this is Gates’ lawyer’s description of events, and is not shared by the other participant in the conversation, that is fine.  But to present one side’s account as fact is shoddy.

        <

        p>She is right that the Cambridge Police acted, by most accounts, in a dunderheaded way.  But trying to pass off one version as the neutral truth, or the motives anyone impels upon the participants as confessed reality is the opposite of journalism.  It may take away the punch in an opinion piece to put in the necessary qualifiers, but it’s honest.

        <

        p>I imagine Gates’ version is closer to the truth than that of the police.  However, I don’t know the truth and the only two men who do aren’t saying much.  The difference is that I admit that I don’t know — and I don’t see too many others being honest enough to do the same, including Ms. Abraham.

    • Profiling is about not giving someone the benefit of the doubt. There are two possible instances here. It is impossible to know for sure because the decisions are all mental, and we don’t know what was going through people’s minds.

      <

      p>First is the woman who called this in. I personally don’t think the situation, as described, is enough for a complete stranger to call 911 to report a B&E. Maybe this woman is hypersensitive to possible crimes, maybe I’m undersensitive to things like this — but as described, with suitcases, well dressed men, and a prolonged attempt to unstick a front door — it just doesn’t really add up to me because she did not live in the neighborhood, so she did not know the owner. It is possible that seeing a Black man trying to unstick a door made her uneasy enough to call this in, and it is possible that if the man was white that she would have given him the benefit of the doubt. We have no way of knowing for sure.

      <

      p>The second potential instance involves the cop. It appears he did not give the benefit of the doubt to Gates being a legal occupant of the house. The officer possibly made the judgment that since Gates was Black, it was simply less likely that he lived there, so he pressed him a little harder. Maybe this is just the style of the officer, but maybe again the officer figured that it was more likely that Gates was there unlawfully because he was Black so he asked more questions.

      <

      p>That is the same type of profiling that takes place when a Black man is driving a Mercedes — I am convinced that the general public believes that is more likely that the Black man is a drug dealer than if it was a white person driving the Mercedes.

      <

      p>I have to figure that a lifetime of being second guessed and questioned because people don’t give you the benefit of the doubt must be grating on the soul.

      <

      p>I have had online discussions with a police officer about profiling. This officer told me that the police do use race to profile, they don’t consider it profiling because they use other factors too. For example, they may see a car driving down the street, they see out-of-state plates, they see the car slowing and stopping every so often, the driver is younger, it is late at night, and — here’s the important part — the driver is Black and the neighborhood is mostly white. They consider that enough reason to pull the car over. The cop I discussed this with was adamant that this was not racial profiling because the other factors were also used. But the bottom line is that if the driver is white, he is less likely to be stopped.

      <

      p>That’s what this is all about – people assuming that because of the color of your skin, that you are “more likely” to be something. More likely to be on welfare. More likely to shoplift. More likely to be where you are because of affirmative action. More likely to not be the “most qualified” for the job. That is the crux of racism.  

      • If I’m a white guy driving a vehicle through, say, Mattapan, do you think that would make me more or less likely to be stopped by a police officer?

        • The officer I conversed with said that if you were white and driving with Vermont plates in a Black crime-ridden neighborhood, you would also be targeted because you would be presumed to be a heroin dealer trying to exchange guns for drugs.

          <

          p>That doesn’t absolve the behavior or make it fair. There are a lot more white neighborhoods than Black neighborhoods. The hidden subtlety there is that whites shouldn’t be in bad neighborhoods, and Blacks shouldn’t be in good neighborhoods. Think about how perverse that belief is.  

  2. And I lost my 10 year for a few minutes on the crowded beach. I finally spoke to a lifeguard and they radioed the other lifeguards to look for him. Then I got a phone call that my son was at our blanket. I told the lifeguard I was all set but he informed me that it was logged as an official “lost child” and I had to speak tot he police officer in the parking lot. I had to go back to my blanket and get the 10 year old and then walk up to the parking lot and see the cop. Then I had to go back to my blanket to get my license to prove I was my son’s Father. All was quite the hassle but since I initially lost my son I complied.

    <

    p>The cop wasn’t an asshole, he was following the rules. Should have used his judgement and just dropped the whole thing, maybe. But… what if I was kidnapping the 10 year old. What if this was a domestic situation? There are so many things that could have been bad or wrong and this small procedure by the police was there way of just “checking” to make sure everything was on the up and up. Gates should have complied with Crowley (who was just doing his job and following the protocol) and shown him his ID and dropped it.

    <

    p>Gates is an ass and should suffer from all this which he brought on himself.

Archives