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?

-- 
                                                          - 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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On 3-5-2010 22:40, Darren New wrote:
> 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.

I guess Warp's problem is that not only the police is 'punished' but the 
society as a whole even more.

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andrel wrote:
> The procedure is this: 

Yep. That's pretty much how it works here, at least in theory. Of course, 
who is going to check?

If the traffic rate is too high, it's also OK to stop every Nth person. But 
you don't get to pick who you stop *after* you see them. You make the list 
of which cars you'll stop before you even set up the blockade.

-- 
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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Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote:
> On Mon, 03 May 2010 16:22:04 -0400, Warp wrote:

> > Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote:
> >> On Mon, 03 May 2010 14:40:52 -0400, Warp wrote:
> > 
> >> >   I consider myself to be the exact opposite of a racist in the sense
> >> >   that
> >> > I *couldn't care less* about "race" or skin color or anything.
> > 
> >> When you say "race matters", look out, you're making a distinction
> >> based on race, whether you want to admit it or not.
> > 
> >   On the contrary: I'm *not* making any distinction based on race. To me
> > it doesn't matter what race somebody might represent.

> Um, you are, if you say "90% of illegal immigrants are of Hispanic 
> origin, so we should stop people of Hispanic origin in order to ensure 
> they're here legally".  That's the textbook definition of racial 
> profiling.

  You didn't understand me. I do not distinguish race as being any more
or less relevant than any other feature.

  If hair color can be used for some statistic, then so be it. If race can
be used for some statistic, then fine. I don't care. To me it's all the
same. I don't make any special distinction.

  Or in other words, I'm not hypersensitive about talking about race, as
so many other people seem to be. To me it's just as incosequential as a
subject as hair or eye color.

  If the distinguishing feature of some statistic happens to be race, and
you really want to call it "racial profiling", then I suppose I can't stop
you. It's just that the term "racial profiling" is always used in a very
negative sense, like it was a thousand times more outrageous than making
a statistic based eg. on gender or age groups. To me it's all the same.
I don't make any special distinction between them.

  I wish everybody else was like that too. I wish the world was a place
where you can talk about human races, make statistics about them and
whatever, freely and without any kind of worry, because it's just as
inconsequential as gender, age or shoe size.

  But no. If you start talking about races, making statistics and profiles,
you are immediately labeled as racist. Sheesh.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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andrel wrote:
> I guess Warp's problem is that not only the police is 'punished' but the 
> society as a whole even more.

It depends on whether you believe you caught the right person in the first 
place.

What lots of people seem to be forgetting in this thread is that by far, the 
vast majority of the population is *not* breaking the law.  If there were no 
limits on the techniques the police could use to find criminals, then the 
99% of the people who are law-abiding would be subject to the same problems 
as the people who aren't. And the 99% of people who are law abiding are 
willing to let the guy with an open bottle of beer in the car go, so they 
don't get stopped and have the police rip *their* car apart in order to see 
if maybe there's any pot in a little baggy in the door panel or something.

-- 
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:
>   You didn't understand me. I do not distinguish race as being any more
> or less relevant than any other feature.
> 
>   If hair color can be used for some statistic, then so be it. If race can
> be used for some statistic, then fine. I don't care. To me it's all the
> same. I don't make any special distinction.

Every feature you mentioned is part of "race". It's all based on genetics.

Was this intentional, or did you also want to include, say, style of 
clothing, amount of taxes paid last year, which God you happen to worship, etc?

>   If the distinguishing feature of some statistic happens to be race, and
> you really want to call it "racial profiling",

People only call it that when the feature you're profiling for hasn't 
anything to do with race. If you're talking about Tay sachs, nobody 
complains about racial profiling.  It's when you're talking about criminal 
behavior that people complain about racial profiling, because the two are 
unrelated.

>   I wish everybody else was like that too. I wish the world was a place
> where you can talk about human races, make statistics about them and
> whatever, freely and without any kind of worry, because it's just as
> inconsequential as gender, age or shoe size.

And when it's inconsequential, people don't mind. If police profiling was 
inconsequential to the people whose race is being used as the bad guys, 
nobody would complain.

>   But no. If you start talking about races, making statistics and profiles,
> you are immediately labeled as racist. Sheesh.

No, it's when one starts talking about races and arresting people based on 
that race that people label one racist.  A doctor who says "blacks are more 
likely to get hernias than whites" or "jews are more likely to get Tay Sachs 
than chinese", nobody labels him racist.

-- 
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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