On Thu, 23 Jul 2009 21:09:34 -0400, Wayne.B
wrote:

On Thu, 23 Jul 2009 17:26:38 -0400, Zombie of Woodstock
wrote:

"Black students and professors at Harvard have complained for years
about racial profiling by Cambridge and campus police. Harvard
commissioned an independent committee last year to examine the
university's race relations after campus police confronted a young black
man who was using tools to remove a bike lock. The man worked at Harvard
and owned the bike.

Please don't take offense at this, but you know - that's stretching
the whole idea of "racial profiling".

Police do all kinds of profiling, not just racial/ethnic but also
economic. I know, I've been the victim of it a few times. Ha ha,
very funny you say, Wayne B, a moderately prosperous white boy with a
half decent education the victim of economic profiling? Most
definitely, here's a few examples:

1. As a college student I was far from prosperous and used to drive
around in older cars, usually well maintained, but not exactly show
room fresh shall we say. I used to get stopped on all kind of
pretexts, some obviously trumped up, like an allegedly inoperable tail
light that some how became operable right after being stopped. It
doesn't take too much of that to realize that it's happening to other
people also, and it breeds disrespect for the law.

2. As a resident of a very well off community in Westchester County
(Larchmont Woods), at one time I used to keep a ratty old Plymouth
Duster for driving to the train station. There was always a police
officer outside the station directing traffic in the morning. One
day the car in front of me made an abrupt stop and I also stopped
quickly in a nice orderly fashion. The white Cadillac behind me was
not so lucky and had to lock up his tires in a screeching halt to
avoid hitting me. The cop looked up to see what the commotion was
about and immediately decided that I must have been to blame. He came
over to my window ready to read me the riot act or worse. I patiently
explained that it was the car behind me (the white Cadillac) that had
skidded to a stop. He accepted my answer but said absolutely nothing
to the driver of the Caddy.

Some of this stuff is the normal "paranoia" or touchiness of human
interaction. Some of this stuff is folks taking offense at police
authority. They're too "smart" and "important" to be bothered by
somebody "dumber" and "not as important."
Not saying any of this is fact, but here's a couple possibilities for
your cases.
In the first example you cite, maybe the cops weren't stopping you to
hassle you.
When you were a kid, you may have been a suspicious character to the
cops. Maybe you looked around too much, or your head was unnaturally
motionless. Maybe it happened that a car like yours was just reported
to be stolen or involved in a crime or a person fitting your
description. Cops key in on these things.
In the second incident, maybe the cop profiled your car, but just
maybe his ears mistakenly directed his eyes to it. By the time he
bought your explanation he had cooled down and shrugged the whole
thing off. Cops are human.
Anyway, I'm reposting my rules about this, first posted years ago in
the rec.autos.driving group when we were talking about cops and
tickets. Got it from Mendel.
******
A cop and a driver get together to make most traffic tickets. It can
be a complex process but let's concentrate on the prick chromosome of
the event, and its dominance. This is a simplification, and there are
exceptions, but as a general rule you can bet on it.
non-prick driver + non-prick cop = no ticket.
non-prick driver + prick cop = ticket
prick driver + non-prick cop = ticket
prick driver + prick cop = ticket - at least

On the surface, that looks a lot worse than it is. Because the vast
majority of cops aren't pricks, your odds are really good.
I won't go into the times a cop gave me a pass because I simply
treated him as I would any one else. Doesn't hurt to be a good
schmoozer either. Ran into prick cops twice. Beat both tickets.
I got profile-stopped once.
I tore down the boiler in my house one evening to clean it. Soot all
over. Decided to replace a part. Bathed, and washed my hair with
something really strong to get the soot out. Combed my hair straight
back and hit the sack. Got out of bed bright and early to get to the
parts store. Just tossed on clean work clothes and jumped in my
truck. As I'm hitting the stop sign at the end of my street I glance
in the rear view mirror and didn't recognize myself. My hair is
sticking straight up, and since I just woke up 30 seconds ago my eyes
looked like they're propped open with toothpicks or something. Scary.
As I stop, a paddy wagon rolls by on the cross street in the direction
I'm going, driver on my side. The cop glances at me, looks back ahead
then his head spins back at me. Classic double take. I'll never
forget it.
As I turned behind them the cop is already pulling over and has his
arm out the window waving me to stop. Asked if I lived around there
and wanted to see my license. Even though I'm usually crabby in the
morning, I didn't blame them. I saw myself in the mirror. Looked
like a ****ing psycho wacko cult killer. The incident made my day.
Another time in '68 I was working in the mills and had a beard,
catching up for it being disallowed in the Navy. I got ticketed for
backing into an empty street. Technically righteous ticket, but
the hippies were rioting downtown at the Dem convention, so the beard
nailed it. I could feel it. Human nature.
This Henry Gates guy lost his cool. Bad move with a cop.
I worked with a lot of black guys at IH who would be Gate's age now.
One I talked to a lot and went to the track with set me straight on
this profiling. Leroy, and he's probably dead now, or about 80.
This was about '69 and he told me he had been stopped on the way to
work - west side of Chicago. Wasn't the first time either.
I didn't see anything wrong with cops stopping him, since there was a
lot of crime going on there.
He said, "Vic, I'm here working with you, I go to church, I'm putting
2 of my kids through college, and I don't break the law.
You're out drinking every day and carrying on. Are you getting
stopped for nothing? What's the difference?"
I agreed with him mostly. He was a good man, and there were plenty of
racist cops in Chicago. But the larger problem was the crime, and
that's a cop's job to handle. If they weren't on their toes on the
west side then, the residents would be squawking about racist "lack of
police protection."
Lots of blacks of Gate's age carry a chip on their shoulder.
As the details come out, he don't look too good.
That chip will always exacerbate the race issue. When these guys and
their white counterparts are gone, much of it will go away with them.
Obama surprised me, saying the cops acted stupidly, but at least
he was smarter than Gates and didn't call them racist.

--Vic