Racial Profiling

Racial profiling, the policeman perform of halting and searching of blacks because of their rush, in the course of drug-interdiction efforts and combating misdeed, has become one of the most highly-charged racial matters in America. However, this issue that splits up our territory along very dark and white lines, should not be an issue at all. Racial profiling is nothing more than a shrewd police technique where policeman provide work the laws of likelihood to make the best use of their scarce resources in attacking crime. The trafficking of pharmaceuticals and tools for fighting, and the consequences these pieces have on the communities they end up in, has become a problem that plagues the territory as a whole. It is for this reason, and the loud cry of the citizens in these communities, that the federal government now funds a $37 billion "War on Drugs" that started during the Reagan presidency. While everyone agrees that drugs and weapons need to be cleaned off the streets of our country, most people seem to disagree that this should come as a result of police officers "playing the odds." The deterrence of crime that racial profiling has created in recent years and the holes in the arguments against it substantiate this practice as both effective and necessary.

John Derbyshire wrote an article in National Review that stated "a policeman who concentrates a disproportionate amount of his limited time and resources on young black men is going to uncover far more crimes - and therefore be far more successful in his career - than one who biases his attention toward, say, middle-aged Asian women." It is this probability that the true form of racial profiling is based on. This is not to say that blind racism never occurs in law enforcement, because it does as in all things. However, true racial profiling uses race as one of the many factors in gauging criminal suspiciousness, not the only one. This, then, discredits the claim by many opponents of racial profiling that say police officers are taught to pull-over, search, and interrogate individuals because of their skin color. Instead, as shown through the Drug Enforcement Agency's instructions to law enforcement officials, police are taught some common identifying signs of drug couriers: "nervousness; conflicting information about origin and destination cities among vehicle occupants; no luggage for a long trip; lots of cash; lack of a driver's license or insurance; the spare tire in the back seat; rental license plates or plates from key source states like Arizona and New Mexico; loose screws or scratches near a vehicle's hollow spaces, which can be converted to hiding places for drugs and guns," (Mac Donald).

It is also partially due to the formal practice of racial profiling in police departments that has caused the reduction of crime by 20 percent in the past five years, (Goldberg 56). While many people assail statistics that show African-Americans and Hispanics as the highest incident groups of drug and drug related crimes, the evidence supports that ...