News (Media Awareness Project) - US FL: Editorial: Stop Racial Profiling |
| Title: | US FL: Editorial: Stop Racial Profiling |
| Published On: | 2000-12-23 |
| Source: | St. Petersburg Times (FL) |
| Fetched On: | 2008-09-02 08:08:38 |
STOP RACIAL PROFILING
We have known for some time that the United States is losing the war on
drugs. But documents now coming out of New Jersey shed new light on the
extent to which equal protection and fairness have been casualties of that war.
Over the past decade, at least eighty percent of the cars on the New Jersey
Turnpike selected for search by state troopers have been driven by
minorities, according to files recently released by New Jersey Attorney
General John Farmer. Seventy percent of the time, those searches turned up
nothing.
The numbers are as alarming as they are stark. They confirm what Farmer
himself acknowledged: that racial profiling has long been routine state
procedure, and while nabbing drivers solely on the basis of skin color has
yielded some arrests -- as would even the most random process -- the
practice has inflicted a human toll far greater than any crime-fighting
success it has achieved.
But the documents also provide new insight into the source of that
profiling. While they have put the state's former attorney general (now
supreme court justice) on the hot seat for possibly concealing what he
knew, the documents have also pointed a finger at the federal Drug
Enforcement Administration. Farmer and others say it was the federal
government, acting through the DEA, that initiated and encouraged racial
profiling as it enlisted the help of states in cracking down on highway
drug trafficking.
The DEA continues to deny that it taught unequal enforcement, but evidence
is strong that the federal government -- with a wink if not a nod --
sanctioned discrimination as a tool in its ever-escalating fight against drugs.
The question now is whether that same government is prepared to right the
wrongs it set in motion and address the cause of racial profiling along
with its symptoms. As late as 1997, the U.S. Department of Justice, which
oversees the DEA, defended the drug agency's practices and procedures. The
next attorney general should make it clear that racial profiling has no
place in the nation's law enforcement.
We have known for some time that the United States is losing the war on
drugs. But documents now coming out of New Jersey shed new light on the
extent to which equal protection and fairness have been casualties of that war.
Over the past decade, at least eighty percent of the cars on the New Jersey
Turnpike selected for search by state troopers have been driven by
minorities, according to files recently released by New Jersey Attorney
General John Farmer. Seventy percent of the time, those searches turned up
nothing.
The numbers are as alarming as they are stark. They confirm what Farmer
himself acknowledged: that racial profiling has long been routine state
procedure, and while nabbing drivers solely on the basis of skin color has
yielded some arrests -- as would even the most random process -- the
practice has inflicted a human toll far greater than any crime-fighting
success it has achieved.
But the documents also provide new insight into the source of that
profiling. While they have put the state's former attorney general (now
supreme court justice) on the hot seat for possibly concealing what he
knew, the documents have also pointed a finger at the federal Drug
Enforcement Administration. Farmer and others say it was the federal
government, acting through the DEA, that initiated and encouraged racial
profiling as it enlisted the help of states in cracking down on highway
drug trafficking.
The DEA continues to deny that it taught unequal enforcement, but evidence
is strong that the federal government -- with a wink if not a nod --
sanctioned discrimination as a tool in its ever-escalating fight against drugs.
The question now is whether that same government is prepared to right the
wrongs it set in motion and address the cause of racial profiling along
with its symptoms. As late as 1997, the U.S. Department of Justice, which
oversees the DEA, defended the drug agency's practices and procedures. The
next attorney general should make it clear that racial profiling has no
place in the nation's law enforcement.
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