Q: What is Racial Profiling?
A: According to Professor David Harris of the University of Toledo College of Law, a leading expert on racial profiling, criminal profiles are a set of personal and behavioral characteristics associated with particular offenses that police use to predict who may commit crimes in the future, or identify what type of person may have committed a particular crime for which no credible suspect has been identified or eye-witness description provided. Criminal profiling becomes racial profiling when these characteristics include race, ethnicity, nationality, or religion.
Q: Why should people in my community be concerned about racial profiling? A: When police use race as a proxy for criminal suspicion, it puts all of us at risk. In October 2002, a group of senior international anti-terrorism law enforcement officials released a memo entitled Assessing Behaviors, asserting that the only effective method of …show more content…
has roots that date back to the systematic mistreatment of free Blacks by local patrols during the time of slavery. Contemporary racial profiling gained national attention in the 1990’s when numerous studies indicated the disproportionate targeting of African Americans, and Latinos
Q: Have U.S. post-9/11 policies endorsed racial profiling?
A: Yes. Here are some examples: • A reported 1,200 people of Middle-Eastern descent were rounded up in a sweep for suspects immediately following the attacks of September 11, 2001. Many were detained and in June 2003, a report by the Office of the Inspector General found significant problems in the way the detainees were treated. These included: untimely access to the phone, to legal counsel, to family; prolonged detention based on unclear and under-funded FBI clearance policy; and physical and verbal abuse by prison officials. Her minorities by law enforcement.
Q: Has the government done anything to combat racial