Police Profiling, Criminal Profiling – What You Can Do
If you are pulled over by police, even though you’ve done nothing wrong, it might be because of the color of your skin. Police profiling is an unfortunate problem, and if you feel that you’ve been the victim of it, you should contact a DUI attorney right away.
According to a story in The Chicago Sun-Times in September 2005, minorities are more likely than whites to get pulled over in 32 suburban communities of Chicago. The article, which covered an analysis of data from the Illinois Department of Transportation, said that minorities are three times as likely to be pulled over in a dozen suburbs, and more than nine times as likely in one particular suburb. The odds of criminal profiling leading to a vehicle search are also higher for minorities, as much as four-and-a-half times higher in one suburb.
Getting pulled over as a result of police profiling can then result in officers finding charges against you that can be used as an excuse for the traffic stop in the first place. Some of these charges include accusations of DUI, traffic or vehicle violations. Fight back! Get an attorney experienced with the driving laws in your state.
A qualified attorney could be able to combat some of the arguments people make when saying that police profiling does not occur. One argument is over the statistics themselves. Statisticians say these results are not significant because they’re estimated from census figures, and not the result of direct observations. Furthermore, statisticians could argue that some police officers might not know the race of the driver when they pull him or her over. In addition, the statistician who oversaw the Illinois study, Alex Weiss of Northwestern University, said the results did not substantially deviate from the expected results. However, Weiss said consensual searches of minorities’ vehicles seemed significantly higher than expected.
Another argument that criminal profiling does not occur comes from the police, who claim that the people who conducted the Illinois study didn’t look closely enough at the communities. If they had, claim some police officers and police chiefs, they would have seen that many minorities work in or commute through their towns, but do not live there, thus skewing the data.
But researchers stand by their data. They claim, for instance, that towns next to each other that have similar demographic census statistics also have widely varying findings in the minority makeup of traffic stops, which would seem to indicate police profiling. Your qualified attorney could be able to use these statistics in your defense.
Even a retired sheriff admits that some young officers are eager to prove themselves by writing a lot of tickets. If they pull over residents too often, the residents complain to the local police department. So, the sheriff theorizes, those officers pull over minorities passing through, who might be less likely to complain about criminal profiling.
One retired police officer, who is black, says his story backs up what many African-Americans already believe about police profiling. He says he and his African-American friend were driving in their BMW when a white police officer pulled them over to question the darkness of the car’s window tinting. When the driver showed the officer his badge, the officer backed off, saying, “You know how it is.”
Police chiefs sensitive to the issue of criminal profiling are ordering closer scrutiny of the issue. In Illinois, this is part of a greater effort put forth by state leaders in 2004, who ordered all police departments in the state to record the race of drivers in every stop, as well as the results of the stop: whether the driver was ticketed, searched, or let go.
No matter the future results, the 2005 police profiling study will likely be the standard against which all subsequent similar criminal profiling studies will be compared.
If you’ve been charged with a crime, you need qualified, professional help. Contact a lawyer near you for a free consultation or call Toll Free 1.800.DUI.LAWS.