No Easy Answer to Racial Profiling

There is little doubt in my mind that there is some level of racial profiling committed by some of the cops in this country. No one can know completely what goes on in the heads of the 800,000 full-time sworn police officers in the U.S., but it is a sure bet that there is some profiling going on.

However, I would wager that the numbers of officers actively profiling is a minuscule number compared to the whole. Just as there are doctors, lawyers, clergy, and teachers who stray from the acceptable, it would be incredulous to think that there are not some in the police profession as well.

And just as in those other professions, acts that hurt or demean others in any way are no more acceptable in professional policing. No argument can be made whatsoever for blatant race-based enforcement, meaning that police officers take actions based primarily on the race of the individual involved.

One of the problems, and there are many, is in how to define which actions constitute racial profiling and which are legitimate acts of law enforcement. More and more states are beginning to wrestle with this issue and some are mandating data collection to attempt see what is happening. The issue will then be how to analyze and interpret the raw data. In legitimate research, the researchers must be able to control for multiple variables so that the desired variables can be studied. In the world of humankind, there is no perfect solution for this. So even the best data will be subject to interpretive variants. There is no easy answer; however, there is so much to talk about to get to the racial healing that is so elusive.

The quickest way to stop racial profiling (but not necessarily the accusations) is for every police officer to assess his or her enforcement actions to be sure that they are based solely on behavior, and not on any other factor. Teachable moments abound, and police administrators better get busy and grab them.