Warp wrote:
> nor for racist reasons,
> even if a choice is made based on typical illegal immigration profiles?

What do you mean by "profiles"?  And how does the policeman pick who to ask?

That's *exactly* the point in contention. What's in the profile? How do you 
know the person you're asking fits the profile?

If the profile is "looks Mexican" and the policeman picks based on 
"Mexican-looking guy walked past" then it's racist.

If the profile is "didn't pay social security tax last year in spite of 
spending thousands of dollars on his credit card" and the policeman does a 
credit card database search for people like that, then it's not racist reasons.

See?

> Why is discrimination and racism always assumed as such?

Because a person's "race" is the only thing about them that they can't 
easily change that you can recognize just by looking. These are *great* 
factors for enforcing something. Unfortunately, what it enforces is usually 
unrelated to crime.

If you had an airborne disease that only affected red-heads, that would be a 
*great* way of finding people who needed the vaccine.

>> You're talking about a specific crime.  The point is that there is no 
>> *specific* crime in the case of enforcing the AZ law.  In order to 
>> prosecute a crime, the prosecution must be able to state with specificity 
>> what crime was committed and when.
> 
>   Well, one *could* argue that illegal immigration *is* a specific,
> existing crime being committed right now... 

No. It's a category of crimes. You know only statistically whether it's 
being committed. You know there's a whole bunch of it going on, but you 
don't know a *specific* case of it. Just like you know there's muggings 
going on right now, but you don't know a *specific* victim.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Linux: Now bringing the quality and usability of
   open source desktop apps to your personal electronics.

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Warp wrote:
> Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote:
>> Further, under US law, 
>> if they *did* find illegal substances in my car, if the traffic stop was 
>> not legal, they would not be able to prosecute because they would have 
>> lacked probable cause to pull me over in the first place.
> 
>   That's one thing I have never understood.

It discourages the police from breaking the law in the first place. In 
practice, people aren't going to put police in jail or otherwise punish them 
for catching criminals. If you believe there should be laws like this in the 
first place, the only reasonable way to enforce them is to take something 
away from the police when they break the rules, rather than add something 
(like punishment) when they break the rules.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Linux: Now bringing the quality and usability of
   open source desktop apps to your personal electronics.

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On Mon, 03 May 2010 16:38:41 -0400, Warp wrote:

> Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote:
>> You've said that there's nothing wrong with law enforcement asking
>> random people for their ID.
> 
>   In fact, what I have done is to oppose the idea that law enforcement
>   asking
> random people for their ID (or doing other types of checking) is
> *always* a bad thing, which seemed to be what was being suggested here.
> That's a bit different from claiming that it's always a good thing.
> 
>   As I said, the police checks random drivers here, and I don't see it
>   as a
> bad thing. Hence it's not *always* a bad thing.

And over here that's not the way law enforcement generally works.  You 
seem to trust your government; over here, we tend not to.

>> The Arizona law makes "being brown in public or private places in
>> Arizona" a crime.
> 
>   I have hard time believing the law actually says that...

Not in those specific words.  The law is available online, feel free to 
read it (I have, actually).  I've read the law and I've read several 
opinions and interpretations of it that help explain what the legalese 
actually means in practical terms.

No law would be written to be overtly racist, but that doesn't mean that 
the implications of enforcing it wouldn't be.

Jim

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Jim Henderson wrote:
> Unless of course the problem is caused by contamination of the crime 
> scene, planting of DNA evidence,

Both of which are made much harder if you don't have the suspect's DNA 
before you examine the crime scene, note. :-)

> or contamination of the evidence after it's collected.

Yes, that too, but that's going to be a problem with most any kind of evidence.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Linux: Now bringing the quality and usability of
   open source desktop apps to your personal electronics.

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Darren New wrote:
> Unfortunately, what it enforces is 
> usually unrelated to crime.

Or, to phrase that better, "usually the crime it enforces is unrelated to 
their race."

For example, it was great for catching run-away slaves.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Linux: Now bringing the quality and usability of
   open source desktop apps to your personal electronics.

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On Mon, 03 May 2010 13:45:03 -0700, Darren New wrote:

> Jim Henderson wrote:
>> Unless of course the problem is caused by contamination of the crime
>> scene, planting of DNA evidence,
> 
> Both of which are made much harder if you don't have the suspect's DNA
> before you examine the crime scene, note. :-)

Yup.  Sadly there are people who work in law enforcement who are more 
interested in "catching someone and locking them up" than "catching the 
right person and ensuring they can't commit another crime".  Good thing 
that is the minority of cops.

>> or contamination of the evidence after it's collected.
> 
> Yes, that too, but that's going to be a problem with most any kind of
> evidence.

Very true.  Here in Salt Lake City, the evidence room in the public 
safety building is subject to flooding.  The office is far too small for 
the number of people occupying it.  They have problems with this (I 
understand) on a fairly regular basis.

Good thing the bond measure was approved for them to build a new office 
building. :-)

Jim

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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> If the profile is "looks Mexican" and the policeman picks based on 
> "Mexican-looking guy walked past" then it's racist.

  In the technical sense maybe, but the policeman didn't necessarily do it
with a racist mindset. Maybe he doesn't care what color, height or shoe size
someone has, as long as the law is enforced.

  You can argue that profiling people like this is not the best and most
efficient way of doing it, but why must racism always be assumed?

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                                                          - Warp

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Warp wrote:
>   In fact, what I have done is to oppose the idea that law enforcement asking
> random people for their ID 

Even that wouldn't raise the outcry we have here. But police aren't being 
told to check *random* people. They're not stopping every tenth person 
driving past, like they do with the sobriety checkpoints. They're stopping 
people who *look* like an illegal immigrant.

They are using a profile. They aren't using "random". Stopping "random" 
people isn't anything to do with "If 90% of the lawbreakers are X, then you 
should check people who are X", regardless of what X is.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Linux: Now bringing the quality and usability of
   open source desktop apps to your personal electronics.

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On 3-5-2010 20:07, Warp wrote:
> Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote:
>> No, it's not about offending people, it's about the fact that in the US 
>> the constitution specifically prohibits the police from pulling people 
>> over "just because".
> 
>   Well, then it's different here, as I have mentioned with the traffic
> police.
> 
I assume the procedure is the same here as in Finland. It is not 
entirely clear to me if it also exists in the US. So can anyone from 
there answer Warp's implicit question/conclusion?

The procedure is this: the police fences of a piece of the road and 
checks everybody, nobody excluded. Checks can be on alcohol or weapons 
or drugs. They need to have a special permit to do so, often this is 
setup as a inter-policedepartment action as the number of policemen 
required is too large to be handled by a single department. If the 
permit is for alcohol they are not allowed to search the whole vehicle 
(perhaps if they find a drunk driver they can, don't know).

If there is more traffic than they can handle they set up camp in e.g. a 
petrol station next to the road. They pull over as much as they can 
handle and when someone leaves they take the next approaching car. 
Skipping one because it is driven by an old lady and the next one is a 
young person with a foreign appearance is not allowed.

Thus the racial profiling pitfall is circumvented.

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Warp wrote:
>   You can argue that profiling people like this is not the best and most
> efficient way of doing it, but why must racism always be assumed?

Because there are trivial ways of ensuring it's prevented.

When we first started having a bunch of checking of bags at the airport 
gates here, the checkers working juuust before you go on the plane would 
roll a die. If it came up 6, you got checked. Not if you looked arabic, or 
mexican, or smelled bad. That's random.

If you've been in an international airport, you might have seen a red/green 
light at customs. You push the button. If it turns red, you get checked. 
That's random.

The policeman saying "I'll check *that* guy in the crowd" very likely is 
racists even if the policeman doesn't think it is. He's going to use his 
"hunch." His beliefs are going to affect his choice. This is why we have 
science - to keep even unconscious beliefs from affecting our worldview.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Linux: Now bringing the quality and usability of
   open source desktop apps to your personal electronics.

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