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A View from the Experts: ACLU finds profiling ineffective
Sunday, January 27, 2002 By Lynda Guydon Taylor, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
As a mature, black woman, Yvonne Scruggs-Leftwich thinks she is about as unlikely a terrorist suspect as an airline would want to find.
But that has not deterred airport security from stopping and searching her. The most recent incident occurred last week on a Tampa-Baltimore flight. It was perhaps the 20th time since Sept. 11 for the executive director of the Black Leadership Forum, a confederation of 26 civil rights organizations based in Washington, D.C.
She requested preboarding because she has arthritis and has difficulty boarding the plane. Instead she was told she had been selected for screening although she already had passed through a security check. Scruggs-Leftwich has reconciled herself to the fact security personnel think she's Middle Eastern, but that alone is no reason to screen her every time she boards a plane.
"I see this opportunity for being abused, for whatever their objective is, has gotten completely out of hand."
As a result, she said, she is beginning to see profiling as a tool to control and retaliate that is endorsed by Attorney General John Ashcroft and others in the administration. In her view, racial profiling is no more appropriate now than it was before Sept. 11. While terrorism presents a dilemma for airlines, she would opt for better training for those who screen passengers.
"It permits arbitrary identification and detention of people about whom [security] are suspicious. Nothing exists in a vacuum. We in civil rights and libertarianism have tried to make the point racial profiling continues unabated."
The administration's view seems to be "you're either with us or against us," she said.
The Black Leadership Forum is so concerned about the current challenges to civil rights it joined with various ethnic groups in a rally and town hall discussion Jan. 19 in Washington, D.C. Scruggs-Leftwich helped to organize the rally, which the American Civil Liberties Union attended.
Larry Frankel, ACLU executive director of Pennsylvania, sees the same things wrong with racial profiling in traffic stops that he does with its use in airport screening. In short, he finds it an ineffective and inefficient means for determining who is suspicious.
It would be more appropriate to focus on behavior rather than appearance. By concentrating on a person's looks, Frankel said, police are missing other people who should be stopped.
"We need to be effective in fighting terrorism. We need to focus on behavior."
The important thing is, has the suspect done something to trigger suspicion or questions? Terrorists need not be Middle Eastern. In fact, he said, they could recruit someone from the United States. Frankel pointed out Richard C. Reid, who boarded a plane with a bomb in his shoe, is British.
In traffic stops, the lesson learned from racial profiling is, it increases tension and distrust within the community and results in less cooperation. By alienating thousands of citizens to the point where they no longer want to cooperate, Frankel believes the government loses valuable information.
If whites were stopped the way non-whites are being stopped, he believes the public would be outraged.
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