Is there a better term?

[Rick Kennerly]

><))));>'Racial Profiling' has always been an inaccurate - and in
><))));>my estimation, deliberately dishonest - expression.  It is
><))));>not races that are profiled, but crimes.

Apparently you've never been a professional black man commuting 50 miles a
day in a luxury car on the NJ Turnpike or you'd have a different opinion.
You'd get used to spending a lot of time explaining yourself while you
garner tickets, not for speeding or reckless driving, but  for "changing
lanes within 100 ft of an intersection" (even the little side streets
without traffic lights that intersect larger highways), "failure to signal
for 100 ft before changing lanes", or "driving with obscured rearview mirror
(sunglasses looped up there at night).  Know may white folk who get those
kinds of tickets?  Or if you'd had your wife's body cavities searched three
times in four years by customs officials at international airports because a
black family with a timeshare boat in the islands is suspicious.  Sure don't
read about that happening to white folk in Cruising World.

If you want to increase reported crime, as many localities have found out,
flood a particular area with police.  The more police, the more crimes will
be reported because there are more bored eyes watching.  If you want to
prove that a particular group commits a disproportionate number of crimes,
flood their part of town with cops and stop plenty of that group and you'll
soon have all the statistics you desire--same thing happened to Jews in the
ghettos.

Actually, a new program at Customs is leading the way in proper law
enforcement profiling, and yielding better results.  Analyzing the ticket
purchase, entry and exit patterns, duration of stay, and past criminal
history is a far better indicator of possible illegal activity than skin
tone.  Since Customs switched to the new whole person concept of profiling,
their drug yield per man hour has gone up.

rhk