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Canterbury defends police on "Racial Profiling" Issue
07/30/2009
National President Chuck Canterbury is featured on
this morning's USA Today
opinion page:
Racism is wrong, and our society suffers whenever we
fail to confront racial prejudice in our personal and
professional lives. It is wrong to think a man a
criminal because of the color of his skin, and it is
wrong to think a man a racist because of the color of
his uniform. The arrest of Henry Louis Gates Jr. and the
ensuing events are examples of the latter. Assumptions
were made that the facts did not bear out, and it turned
into every police officer's nightmare.
There is a mistaken perception that the ugliness of
racism is an intrinsic part of the culture of law
enforcement--a perception we must correct. Racial
profiling is not a legitimate law enforcement tool, and
there is no evidence that prejudice is a systemic
problem in U.S. law enforcement.
Policing is one of the most closely supervised
professions in the USA. In fact, Bill Lann Lee, the
assistant attorney general for civil rights in the
Clinton administration, told executives of the Fraternal
Order of Police that he found, in more than 90% of the
civil rights investigations of police agencies by the
Justice Department, it was police managers, not line
officers, who were responsible for the agencies'
deficiencies.
Racial profiling cannot exist unless police executives
allow it--unless a whole department tolerates it--and
that just does not happen today. Unfortunately, because
of past injustices, minority group members sometimes
assume that any routine stop of a minority is racial
profiling, an assumption that a white driver in the same
circumstances is unlikely to make.
A decade ago, Congress wisely rejected legislation that
would have required officers to record the race of
anyone they stopped. Having fought for generations
trying to create a color-blind society, should we now
embrace the illogical conclusion that the only way
toward a color-blind society is to record everyone's
color any time we interact?
I do not know how we as a nation solve the problems of
racism, but I do know what will and will not work in the
profession of law enforcement. We must begin by
challenging and refuting the idea that racism is
tolerated in our nation's police forces. |
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