“No one should live in fear of being stopped whenever he leaves his home
to go about the activities of daily life.”
Shira A. Scheindlin, federal judge“Well, I think profiling is something that we’re going to have to start
thinking about as a country. And other countries do it.... And they do
it successfully. And I hate the concept of profiling. But we have to start
using common sense, and we have to use our heads.”
President Donald Trump“I don’t even talk about whether or not racial profiling is legal. I just don’t
think racial profiling is a particularly good law enforcement tool.”
Eric Holder, former attorney generalOur civil rights protect us from discrimination by the government and our fellow
Americans. Most everyone would agree that selective enforcement of laws depending
on the color of one’s skin constitutes discrimination—and is unacceptable. However,
opinions on discrimination become less clear-cut in the realm of law enforcement,
particularly when it comes to strategies that involve racial profiling. Not surprisingly,
racial profiling is illegal as a general tool for screening suspects. As Shira Scheindlin, the
federal judge who struck down New York City’s controversial “stop-and-frisk” policy
has made clear, Americans should not be singled out for scrutiny by law-enforcement
officers just because of the color of their skin.^1 Under this policy, police officers stopped
people based on the “reasonable suspicion” that they were engaged in criminal activity.
At its peak in 2011, more than 685,000 New Yorkers were stopped by police; 88 percent
were entirely innocent, just over half were between 14 and 24 years old, and 87 percent
were African American or Latino. In 2017, fewer than 11,000 people were questioned
and frisked by police in New York.^2
However, President Donald Trump and others have called for a “commonsense”
approach to profiling when it comes to both matters of local and national security,
which would include more intense scrutiny of people who fit a certain profile imaginedOpponents of “stop-and-frisk”
policing tactics have argued that
the practice encourages illegal racial
profiling. Others say that profiling may
be necessary in certain circumstances
to ensure public safety or advance
other goals.5
148You can’t discriminate
against me... right?
Civil Rights
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