Off the On Beat

Discrimination and Profiling in Police Work
by Greg Doyle, Sergeant, Upland Police Department (retired)

There are many tasks assigned to law enforcement patrol personnel in their daily assignments, which fall into two main categories: responding to calls and profiling suspects. In the first category are the usual duties of receiving a radio call and reacting to whatever the call demands: domestic violence, bank robbery, traffic accident, drowning accident, natural disaster, shooting, loud party, suicide, prowler, homicide, burglary, or auto theft (to name a few.) On the other hand, patrol personnel are required to aggressively patrol their assigned areas with the objective of detecting, confronting, and apprehending those who purposefully and deliberately profile their fellow citizens as intended targets of opportunity for criminal activity. Unfortunately, the majority of criminals do not wear clever T-shirts or carry large signs advertising their intentions to commit criminal acts. Hence, law enforcement are trained to profile and discriminate between the average citizen and the would-be criminal.

Based on certain patterns of behavior deputies, highway patrol, and police officers regularly profile and discriminate against those persons most likely engaged in or about to engage in criminal activity. This has been tested for several decades in the United States’ court system, challenged by criminal defendants and legal advocacy groups, weighed against the Constitution, and approved (with specific boundaries and guidelines) by our judiciary and bound into law by the Supreme Court. Every new police recruit is given instruction (in the academy) and every policing agency perpetually trains, adopts policy, and disciplines its personnel to adhere to and remain within these legal guidelines.

Criminals come in all colors, shapes, and sizes, and from all walks of life. To argue that one particular race or ethnicity is more prone to criminality than another is bigotry, just as it is to assume law enforcement personnel have nothing better to do than single out a particular minority for the purpose of harassment. Ask anyone living in a neighborhood plagued by gang activity if they prefer the police to contact and question gang members or leave them alone. Ask any parent who is concerned for their children if they prefer the police to stop and question people frequenting a suspected drug dealer in their neighborhood. Ask any victim of an auto theft if they want the police actively profiling and detaining potential car thieves in their apartment complex.

For each anecdotal instance where an individual complained of being "unduly harassed" by law enforcement because of ethnicity, there were and are thousands of instances where other persons of color were not. As an anecdotal example, I recall a gentleman of color calling to complain to me about his wife being harassed by one of my White officers "because she was Black." When I probed further into the matter, I learned from the officer that the woman was clocked on radar driving 15 miles over the posted speed limit, during rush hour traffic. When the officer stopped the driver, he did not know her ethnicity until he pulled her over and walked up to her driver side window (she had tinted windows on her car.) When he obtained her license, he discovered she had a suspended driver's license. Following the law and Department policy, the officer impounded her vehicle and issued the driver a citation. The driver's husband was upset because his vehicle was going to be impounded. When I called the husband back with my findings, he was inconsolable. He equated enforcement of the law with racial-profiling, more than likely because of the financial impact of his impounded vehicle.

Having served almost three decades as a police officer (one third of that as a patrol supervisor), I can attest to the challenges of sorting through thousands of faces every shift and determining which individuals are criminals and which are not. And having worked night shifts for eleven consecutive years prior to my retirement, it was almost impossible to discern the race of any individual driving another vehicle from a distance of more than a few feet unless I stopped the vehicle to see who the occupants were. To stop any vehicle requires probable cause.

Most often, the key to identifying a potential wrong-doer is observing him/or her for a few minutes and asking the same questions any citizen might ask if that person were standing adjacent to that citizen's personal vehicle: 1) What is that person doing there? 2) Does that person have a right to be there? 3) Does that person own that property?

It would indeed be a perfect world, if all citizens chose to abide by the laws of the land and respect one another's freedoms and property. Unfortunately, that has never been the case. It also would be blissful if I reported to you that every person I suspected of criminal activity was a criminal. That would be a lie. For sometimes suspicious activity has an reasonable explanation. For instance, I may see someone prowling around a group of parked cars late at night and suspect that person of potentially being an auto burglar. Unless I stop and question that person, I will never know. It might be the person is placing leaflets upon windshields, or waiting for a ride by a friend's car, or carrying a burglar tool waiting to steal a particular type of car.

Now if a citizen in that scenario observed a police officer parked up the street watching the same suspicious person, would it matter to either the officer or citizen what ethnicity the suspect might be? And how would the citizen feel about this situation if the officer ignored the suspicious activity and allowed him/her to smash a window and steal articles from within the car? How would the citizen react if the officer showed up at the car (after the break-in) and informed the citizen:

"I am sorry, Miss, but I had to wait for the culprit to actually commit the crime first, before I could act. You see, I am White, and the suspect was Asian. If I contacted the suspect before he committed the crime, I might be accused of racial-profiling."

Sound absurd? Perhaps one might discern a measure of difficulty in discerning who is being naughty or nice from a distance. The truth is law enforcement personnel are obligated to get up close and personal with suspicious persons. Oh, believe me, I had heard the mantra spouted by persons I have contacted many times over my career. "You stopped me because I'm Black (or Hispanic or Asian, etc.)" It was as if the individual contacted believed I had nothing better to do with my patrol time than to single him/her out. Quite frankly, if the individual in question is doing nothing wrong, then the contact will be terminated within a matter of minutes, if not seconds.

Here are some typical scenarios why patrol personnel stop people:

1) Driving erratically;
2) Disturbing the peace by talking or playing music too loud;
3) Loitering (wandering in areas with no specific purpose);
4) Prowling (wandering in areas with intent to commit a crime);
5) Traffic, equipment, or pedestrian violations;
6) Being in or leaving the area where a crime was just reported;
7) Fitting the general description of a suspect where a crime occurred minutes ago;
8) Fighting in public;
9) Urinating in public;
10) Running from the police for no apparent reason (it looks really suspicious folks);
11) Curfew (applies to anyone under age 18);
12) Drinking in public and underage drinking;
13) Minors smoking or possessing tobacco;
14) Miscellaneous municipal ordinance violations.

With all the myriad legal reasons for stopping an individual to determine whether or not a crime is about to be or is being committed, there is no foundational basis for using ethnicity as the sole reason for law enforcement personnel to contact any person. And if said person is contacted by legal means, by what instrument or contrivance can any reasonable investigation prove otherwise? Am I suggesting that racial profiling no longer exists? No. But from my experience, racial profiling was the exception and not the rule. And if and when it could be proven, it was severely dealt with through internal affairs investigations, disciplinary action, and termination from employment.

The fact that certain advocacy groups descry wide spread racial-discrimination by law enforcement because of a video taped incident replayed repeatedly by the media has no factual basis in reality. That is like declaring that all apples are infested with worms because one bit into an apple and found a wiggler. At my former agency, officers were required to carry tape recorders and activate them on every contact and call. What my agency learned was that officers were following the rules in the majority of cases. Those who violated policy were disciplined. Some citizens, unaware of the audio taping, would make allegations of misconduct against the officers. The tapes clearly refuted the allegations.

Personally, I abhor evil. As a peace officer, it was my duty to detect and deter evil where I could. It had no color, but always had a human face attached to it. And every criminal I ever arrested, regardless of ethnicity, gave me ample reason for and justification to arrest them. If you hate crime as I do, then I encourage you to support your local policing agency to discriminate against criminals by profiling them for the unacceptable behaviors that disrupt our neighborhoods and negatively impact our lives.



(copyright 2010, Gregory Allen Doyle)