Blacks and other minorities could face more harassment from law enforcement if a police union can convince Donald Trump to reverse a ban on racial profiling. The National Fraternal Order of Police issued a statement on several policy proposals for President-elect Trump.
One of the policies that the union wants to reverse is the ban on racial profiling. In 2003, President George Bush created guidelines that prohibited federal agents from using race and ethnicity as a means to arrest and investigate possible suspects. The guidelines were implemented following pushback from civil rights groups who brought attention to racial profiling incidents such as ”driving while Black.” Blacks across the nation revealed horrific stories of being stopped by police simply because of their race.
In the statement, the National Fraternal Order of Police claims that Blacks and minorities should not be protected by race because it excludes other groups.
During his campaign, Trump suggested that racial profiling was necessary. “Our local police are afraid to do anything about it because they don’t want to be accused of [racial] profiling.”
However, racial profiling does not help to solve or prevent crime, studies have revealed. When former New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer commissioned a study to examine 175,000 of New York’s “stop and frisk” records, the results showed why racial profiling doesn’t work. The 2005 study concluded that Blacks accounted for over 50 percent of the people who were stopped by authorities. Whites, who make up 43 percent of the population, were stopped only 13 percent of the time by authorities.
However, the police only arrested 10 percent of Blacks who were stopped and 13 percent of Whites who were stopped. Police were stopping more Blacks, but it didn’t lead to more arrests.
So while racial profiling led to more Blacks being stopped, it did little to help police keep criminals off the street.
The results prove that the National Fraternal Order of Police is stoking racism through politics. Unfortunately, Trump may use his power to allow police to further oppress citizens of color.
