Racial Profiling

The Persistent Myth Of Radicalization

June 17, 2022 Cody Bloomfield, Defending Rights and Dissent. Educate! Extremism, Police, Racial Profiling, Radicals

You’ve seen the story in the media. A kid stumbles across fringe ideas online, gets involved with the wrong crowd, and ends up in the headlines for committing some act of violence. These stories follow a familiar arc. The only problem? For every person that follows this trajectory, many more will adopt fringe ideas and never commit violence. And for every hard-core idealogue that commits violence, there are people drawn to the violence, not the ideology. Following reprehensible acts of white supremacist violence, lawmakers are understandably grasping for solutions. But reliance on outdated radicalization theory empowers law enforcement agencies to trample over constitutional rights and civil liberties, all while misleading law enforcement about the causes of white supremacist violence.

To Create True Sanctuary Cities, We Must End Racist Policing

June 6, 2018 By Reyna Wences and Ruth Gomberg-Muñoz, Truthout.org Create! Detention Centers, ICE, Immigration, Police, Racial Profiling, Racism, Undocumented

Cities across the US have enacted sanctuary measures to resist the Trump administration’s escalation of anti-immigrant policing, but most municipal sanctuary measures have a central weakness: They only seek to protect immigrants deemed as “law-abiding,” leaving those already ensnared in a racist system of criminalization and policing unprotected. Sanctuary ordinances, such as the ones adopted by Chicago in 2012 and by the state of Illinois in 2017, seek to inhibit cooperation between local policing agencies and federal immigration authorities by prohibiting local police departments from using agency resources to hold immigrants for federal agents. But as with most sanctuary legislation, these bills distinguish otherwise “law-abiding” undocumented immigrants from “criminal aliens,” who are left unprotected by sanctuary measures and rendered highly vulnerable to detention and deportation.

Black Drivers 85% More Likely To Be Stopped By Police In Missouri Than White Drivers

June 5, 2018 By Lowenna Waters, Indy100.com Educate! Missouri, Racial Profiling, Racism

Data released by the Missouri Attorney General Josh Hawley on Friday showed that the disparity is at its worst since records began 18 years ago. Despite being less likely to be searched than black, Hispanic or American Indian drivers, white drivers were more likely to be caught with contraband. The data, which analysed the rate of vehicle stops in Missouri in 2017, also showed that 7.1 per cent of Hispanics and 6.6 per cent of blacks were arrested after stops, however only 4.2 per cent of whites were. Reacting to the report, John Gaskin, spokesperson for the St Louis chapter of the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People), said: Quite frankly, it's really deplorable. It's why we've ended up in a situation where people are talking about travel advisories and African-American groups are less likely to come and do business in our state.

Federal Judge Refers Sheriff Joe Arpaio For Criminal Prosecution

August 23, 2016 Debra Cassens Weiss, www.abajournal.com Educate! Courts, Criminal Justice, Racial Profiling

By Debra Cassens Weiss for ABA News -A federal judge on Friday ordered Maricopa County, Arizona, Sheriff Joe Arpaio be referred to the U.S. Attorney’s office for criminal prosecution as a result of alleged violation of a court order barring racial profiling. U.S. District Judge G. Murray Snow referred for prosecution Arpaio and three others, report the Arizona Republic, Phoenix New Times and the New York Times.

Cop Secretly Records Supervisor Telling Him To Racially Profile

July 15, 2016 Nathan Wellman, www.usuncut.com Educate! NYPD, Police, Racial Profiling

By Nathan Wellman for U.S. Uncut - A recording of an NYPD officer appearing to pressure a transit officer to specifically target black men has just been released by Gawker. The recording was provided to the New York Daily News for a story released in January, but the actual audio was not released to the public until now. Although the full recording is 36 minutes long, only a two-minute excerpt has been released.

Settlement Reached In Barneys ‘Shop-And-Frisk’ Case

January 25, 2016 Staff, www.amsterdamnews.com Resist! Lawsuit, New York (NY), Protests, Racial Profiling, Racism

By Staff of Amsterdam News. New York City, NY - Reports indicate that Barneys has agreed to pay a settlement to a Black man who accused the luxury retailer of racially profiling him. In 2013, then-19-year-old Trayon Christian was stopped and questioned by NYPD officers outside of Barneys after he bought at $350 belt. Christian alleged that he bought a designer belt before he was stopped by undercover officers. He claimed officers said they were tipped off by a Barneys sales clerk, who accused Christian of using a debit card that did not belong to him.

D.O.J. & F.B.I. Admit No-Fly Lists Use “Predictive Assessments”

August 12, 2015 Spencer Ackerman, www.occupy.com Educate! Corruption, Law, National Security, Racial Profiling, State Terror, Wars and Militarism

By Spencer Ackerman in Occupy - The Obama administration’s no-fly lists and broader watchlisting system is based on predicting crimes rather than relying on records of demonstrated offenses, the government has been forced to admit in court. In a little-noticed filing before an Oregon federal judge, the U.S. Justice Department and the FBI conceded that stopping U.S. and other citizens from traveling on airplanes is a matter of “predictive assessments about potential threats,” the government asserted in May. “By its very nature, identifying individuals who ‘may be a threat to civil aviation or national security’ is a predictive judgment intended to prevent future acts of terrorism in an uncertain context,” Justice Department officials Benjamin C. Mizer and Anthony J. Coppolino told the court on May 28. “Judgments concerning such potential threats to aviation and national security call upon the unique prerogatives of the Executive in assessing such threats.”

Understanding The Racial Bias You Didn’t Know You Had

December 31, 2014 Jenée Desmond-Harris, www.vox.com Educate! Racial Justice, Racial Profiling

Implicit racial bias tends to work against the same groups that are the victims of the type of overt racism that you hear from white supremacists or the more subtle bigotry of people who believe that racial minorities suffer from cultural pathology or who actively defend racial and ethnic stereotypes. But it can also affect the minds of people who would say — honestly — that they are horrified by these types of attitudes. That's because the implicit associations we hold often don't align with our declared beliefs. As Cynthia Lee, a professor at the George Washington University School of Law, has explained, "the social science research demonstrates that one does not have to be a racist with a capital R, or one who intentionally discriminates on the basis of race, to harbor implicit racial biases."

Pranksters Expose The NYPD’s Serious Racial Profiling Problem

November 1, 2014 Alex Smith, www.ryot.org Educate! NYPD, police brutality, Racial Justice, Racial Profiling

The NYPD was just caught racial profiling yet again. This time, the proof is on video and it’s so extreme, it will make your stomach drop. Two YouTube pranksters staged an experiment — arguing in front of the same policeman while they were dressed in Western clothes and, then again, twenty minutes later in Muslim clothes. The difference between the officer’s response to the scenarios is stark. When Adam Saleh and Sheiikh Akbar were dressed in Western city garb and speaking in American accents, the police offer pretended not to see them. Just twenty minutes later, they wore what they called Muslim “cultural clothes” and spoke with a foreign accent while they argued. What followed was one really angry officer.

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