scientific basis of Vogel’s system is questionable—his “cumulative similarities” were based on a sample of thirty cases—and its application even more worrisome.43 While Vogel claims that race was never a factor in his approach, his deputies’ behavior tells a different story.44 Black people and Latinos represented 5 percent of the drivers on the roads his department patrolled. But according to a review of 148 hours of videotape from cameras mounted in squad cars, minorities made up 70 percent of the people stopped and 80 percent of those searched. Of the 1,100 drivers appearing on the tapes, only nine were issued tickets.45
Likewise, under “Operation Pipeline” the DEA told the police not to consider race as a factor, while continuously referencing the race of suspected drug dealers.46 Pipeline emphasized the use of pretext stops and “consent” searches (that is, searches lacking probable cause).47 The results were predictable. According to a 1999 report by the California legislature’s Task Force on Government Oversight, two-thirds of those stopped as part of Operation Pipeline were Latinos. The report noted the systematic nature of this bias:
It should be emphasized that this program has been conducted with the support of CHP [California Highway Patrol] management. Individual officers involved in these operations and training programs have been carrying out what they perceived to be the policy of the CHP, the Department of Justice, and the Deukmejian and Wilson Administrations. Thus we are not faced with “rogue” officers or individual, isolated instances of wrongdoing. The officers involved in these operations have been told repeatedly by their supervisors that they were doing their jobs exactly right.48
By 2000, the DEA had trained over 25,000 cops working for more than 300 agencies in forty-eight states.49
The Flawed Logic of Racial Profiling
The theoretical groundwork for racial profiling was in place long before the DEA popularized its current form. Writing in the middle of the twentieth century, LAPD Chief of Police William H. Parker defended the police saturation of minority neighborhoods. His views anticipate those supporting the use of other race-based police tactics. They are worth quoting at length:
Deployment is often heaviest in so-called minority sections of the city. The reason is statistical—it is a fact that certain racial groups, at the present time, commit a disproportionate share of the total crime. Let me make one point clear in that regard—a competent police administrator is fully aware of the multiple conditions which create this problem. There is no inherent physical or mental weakness in any racial stock which tends its [sic] toward crime. But—and this is a “but” which must be borne constantly in mind—police field deployment is not social agency activity. In deploying to suppress crime, we are not interested in why a certain group tends toward crime, we are interested in maintaining order. The fact that the group would not be a crime problem under different socio-economic conditions and might not be a crime problem tomorrow, does not alter today’s tactical necessities. Police deployment is concerned with effect, not cause.…
At the present time, race, color, and creed are useful statistical and tactical devices. So are age groupings, sex, and employment. If persons of one occupation, for some reason, commit more theft than average, then increased police attention is given to persons of that occupation. Discrimination is not a factor there. If persons of Mexican, Negro, or Anglo-Saxon ancestry, for some reason, contribute heavily to other forms of crime, police deployment must take that into account. From an ethnological point of view, Negro, Mexican, and Anglo-Saxon are unscientific breakdowns; they are a fiction. From a police point of view, they are a useful fiction and should be used as long as they remain useful.
The demand that the police cease to consider race, color, and creed is an unrealistic demand. Identification is a police tool, not a police attitude. If traffic violations run heavily in favor of lavender colored automobiles, you may be certain, whatever the sociological reasons for that condition, we would give lavender automobiles more than average attention. And if these vehicles were predominantly found in one area of the city, we would give that area more than average attention.50
These remarks clearly outline the logic of racial profiling, and reflect the flaws of such logic. Parker tries to deny police bias by relocating it from the individual to the institutional level; he then defends institutional bias by denying individual prejudice. He also attempts to justify institutionalized racism by casting it in “statistical” terms. Hence, we’re reassured that race-based police tactics are not based on “a police attitude” or on a belief in the inherent criminality of people of color, while at the same time we are urged to accept practices designed to target specific populations.
Parker explains unequal police attention with reference to variations in crime rates among different groups. No evidence is offered concerning these variations, but they are said to be the product of unidentified “multiple conditions,” which we are informed are not the business of the police. The possibility that policing may preserve or contribute to these “socio-economic conditions” is not discussed, though the function of policing is identified as “maintaining order.”
Put differently, Parker tries to justify the police department’s discrimination with reference to other discrimination. If this line of reasoning is accepted, then so long as an overall system of White supremacy exists, no particular aspect of it can be faulted. Landlords could justify discrimination in housing, or bankers in lending, just by noting that “the reason is statistical,” that “for some reason” unemployment is higher among “certain racial groups.” Employers could justify discrimination in hiring by explaining that, statistically speaking, certain groups tend to be less qualified. And so on. The moral and political faults of such reasoning are obvious, but there is a logical fallacy as well. An individual’s ability to pay the rent, to perform a job, or to obey the law, cannot be judged on the basis of the statistical performance of a group to which she belongs.51
In the end, Parker’s argument is circular; the premises assume the conclusion. It calls for intensive scrutiny of people of color based on a “disproportionate share of the total crime” committed by them. And how do we know they commit more crimes? Because of their contact with the criminal justice system, obviously!52 David Harris explains the problem simply:
In the case of consensual crimes such as drug activity and weapons offenses, arrest and incarceration rates are particularly poor measures of criminal activity. They are much better measures of law enforcement activity.… Arrest statistics tell us that police arrest disproportionate numbers of African American males for drug crimes. This reflects decisions made by someone in the police department—the chief, lieutenants, street-level supervisors, or even individual officers themselves—to concentrate enforcement activity on these individuals.53
While admitting that the very categories of race are “unscientific” and “a fiction,” Parker argues that race is a “useful fiction” and so should be maintained. But we should ask, useful for what? Presumably for identifying criminals, or rather—for identifying suspects. That is, race is a “useful fiction” for delineating groups of people to be treated as suspects by the police.
The analogy to the color of the car implies that the use of race as an indicator is something of an accident. Of course, it is nothing of the sort.54 It is more paradigmatic than fortuitous, a matter of design rather than happenstance. Race—unlike car color—is used as a profiling tool because society as a whole uses race as a marker of privilege or privation. And according to Parker’s theory, race-based tactics are useful in crime control for just that reason.
Color by Numbers
Today’s law enforcement administrators still seek to justify police practices by appealing to racist conceptions of crime and criminality. In 1999, the New Jersey Attorney General’s office issued a report showing that during the two previous years (1997 and 1998), 40 percent of motorists stopped on the New Jersey Turnpike and 80 percent of those searched were minorities. According to Carl Williams,
