RACIAL PROFILING SPRINGS FROM A BIASED SOURCE OF STATISTICAL DATA

Bruce Macintyre lives in a area of southern Orange County which leads me to
believe him to be an educated man. As such he should know that if a law
enforcement agency conducts stops of one group while giving another group a
pass, the group that is stopped will have a large incidence of arrests
["Race profiling is a good technique for police use," Letters, June 21].

Macintyre states that "According to Justice Department Crime Statistics,
blacks alone accounted for more than half of most crime categories."

I believe that Macintyre meant to say that blacks account for more than half
of those arrested in most crime categories. You see, if the police and other
enforcement agencies paid as much attention to the 37 percentile that
Macintyre belongs to as is currently being paid to minority members of the
community, you would find that those crime numbers would start to reflect
the makeup of the community.

As it stands now, Macintyre is correct. A disproportionate number of blacks
and browns are filling our correctional institutions.

This is not, as some would have us believe, because browns and blacks commit
more crimes than whites. Statistical common sense should tell you that if
there were more whites in the country they would have to commit a larger
number of crimes.

People commit crimes, not races. There is no clear connection between race
and crime. There is no black crime gene. Over the last few years a mountain
of evidence has been gathered that proves there are more white drug
offenders than black and brown together.

Yet our prisons are not full of young, white male drug offenders. Ask
yourself why is this, and if you are an honest person the answer is all too
plain. Some groups of people are being targeted.

I must say, however, that during the six years I have lived in Orange County
I have had to deal with the police in three different cities on traffic matters.

Each and every on of these officers treated me with respect and addressed me
as "sir."

Eric M. Washington, Stanton