HISPANIC AND ASIAN GROUP

Hispanic and Asian Group

Hispanic and Asian Group

  There are many differing definitions of 'racial profiling'. One of the definitions is "the practice of stopping and inspecting people who are passing through public areas--such as drivers on public highways or pedestrians in airports or urban areas where the reason for the stop is a statistical profile of the detainee's race or ethnicity" (Callahan and Anderson, 2001). Racial profiling has become a very hot topic over the last few years, especially after the events of 9/11. Some argue that racial profiling is wrong and unconstitutional, others that it works and there is nothing wrong with it. While some argue that racial profiling does not, in fact exist at all. Does Racial Profiling exist, and should the police be using this tactic?

Today, although most Americans openly criticize the use of racial profiling by police departments, the root causes of the profiling often go unspoken. The typical thoughts on the root causes concentrate on ideological racism-the belief that a particular group is inferior that is incorporated into the culture and society and passed on from generation to generation (Healy p.600). Contrarily, Callahan and Anderson argue "the practice of racial profiling grows from a trio of very tangible sources, all attributable to the War on Drugs, that $37 billion annual effort on the part of local, state, and federal lawmakers and cops to stop the sale of and use of 'illicit' substances. The sources include the difficulty in policing victimless crimes in general and the resulting need for intrusive police techniques; the greater relevancy of this difficulty given the intensification of the drug war since the 1980's; and the additional incentive that asset forfeiture laws give police forces to seize money and property from suspects" (Callahan and Anderson).

The stories and statistics that document the existence of racial profiling normally share two key components; the search for drugs and the possibility of asset forfeiture. This leads to a discussion about "case probability" and "class probability". Case probability describes "situations where we comprehend some factors relevant to a particular event, but not all such factors; class probability means "situations where we know enough about a class of events to describe it using statistics, but nothing about a particular event other that the fact that it belongs to the class in question" (Callahan and Anderson). If a mugging victim describes her assailant as a young Asian man, it does not make sense for the police to detain or question men from other races, but to focus their attention on suspects that fit the description (case probability). In a 2000 effort to marijuana growing, the U.S. Forest service in Mendocino National Forest, California sent a memo to its park rangers stating: "...develop probable cause for a stop...if a vehicle stop is conducted and no marijuana is located and the vehicle has Hispanics inside, at a minimum we would like all individuals FI'd [field interrogated]" (Crews). This is an example of class ...