Some racial profiling defenders agree that the drug war bears a large part of the blame for racial profiling. "Many of the stop-and-search cases that brought this matter into the headlines were part of the so-called war on drugs," writes Derbyshire. "The police procedures behind them were ratified by court decisions of the 1980s, themselves mostly responding to the rising tide of illegal narcotics." But Derbyshire dismisses the argument that racial profiling is chiefly a byproduct of the drug war. He contends that even if drugs were legalized tomorrow, the practice would continue.
He is confusing the two forms of police procedure we have outlined above. The practice of laying out broad dragnets to see what turns up would almost entirely disappear but for the attempt to stamp out drug trafficking and use. Derbyshire, to bolster his case, cites the fact that in 1997, "Blacks, who are 13 percent of the U.S. population, comprised 35 percent of those arrested for embezzlement." This statistic would be useful if he were defending the fact that 35 percent of those investigated for embezzling that year were black. But does Derbyshire believe that stopping random blacks on an interstate highway is catching very many embezzlers? Or that, absent the drug war, cops would start searching cars they pull over for embezzled funds?
How Asset Forfeiture Fuels Profiling
In the 1980s, state legislatures and Congress were frustrated with their inability to arrest and convict "drug kingpins." So they passed laws that gave police the power to seize the property of suspected dealers. The dubious rationale: The "pushers'" property had been purchased through ill-gotten gains and hence didn't rightly belong to them. (Questions about establishing actual guilt were brushed aside as counterproductive.) The federal Comprehensive Crime Act of 1984 was the most important of these measures, as it allowed local police agencies that cooperated in a drug investigation to keep the vast majority of the assets seized.
In addition, the Department of Justice decided that police in states that did not allow their agencies to keep asset forfeiture proceeds could have the feds "adopt" their seizures. The Kansas City Star's Karen Dillon has done extensive investigative reporting on asset forfeiture over the past three years. She writes: "Wisconsin law mandates that forfeiture money goes to public schools, but only $16,906 went into Wisconsin's education fund during the year ending in June 1999, according to the state treasury department. During just six months of the same period, local law enforcement gave the federal government $1.5 million in seizures."
In a paper published in the September 2000 issue of the economics journal Public Choice, "Entrepreneurial Police and Drug Enforcement Policy," Brent D. Mast, Bruce L. Benson, and David W. Rasmussen report that forfeiture receipts roughly doubled every year for several years after the passage of the Comprehensive Crime Act. According to the Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics, the total value of Drug Enforcement Administration seizures reached nearly $1 billion in 1992. A large amount of that revenue flows back from the federal government to state and local police departments. Dillon notes: "In 1997 and 1998, the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department received back more than $2.5 million. In 1998 alone, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation took back $1.7 million."
A letter to the International Narcotics Interdiction Association (INIA) from the Richmond Metro Interdiction Unit, posted on INIA's Web site, is accompanied by a photo of two cops in front of a pile of $298,440. The letter says: "We took this money off a guy coming from NY to Miami on Amtrak about two weeks after returning from SKY NARC [an INIA training session] in Anaheim. It was a great school and as you can see it paid off."
The U.S. Department of Justice reports: "Collectively, local police departments received $490 million worth of cash, goods, and property from drug asset forfeiture programs during fiscal 1997. Sheriffs' departments had total receipts of $158 million."
This kind of money adds a major incentive to police efforts to discover drug crimes. The study by Mast, Benson, and Rasmussen concludes: "The results for the impact of asset seizure laws are robust....Police focus relatively more effort on drug control when they can enhance their budgets by retaining seized assets. Legislation permitting police to keep a portion of seized assets raises drug arrests as a portion of total arrests by about 20 percent and drug arrest rates by about 18 percent."
Of course, if the police begin harassing all motorists in a particular locale, support for their activities will soon evaporate. However, if they can identify a minority group that is somewhat more likely to commit a particular drug crime -- and if they know that members of that group are not politically powerful -- then the police can focus on those people in order to enhance their departmental revenue.
The usual supposition, that the accused is innocent until proven guilty, has been explicitly reversed in asset forfeiture cases. The authorities are not required to prove that a crime, involving the goods in question, has been committed. Instead, they must merely have "probable cause" for the seizure; the burden of proof is on the defendant trying to recover his property. The Schaffer Library of Drug Policy (druglibrary.org/schaffer) has found that 80 percent of those who have had assets seized are never charged with a crime, let alone convicted of one. Federal law provides for up to five years in prison for attempting to prevent one's own property from being grabbed.
It did not take long for those in law enforcement to conclude that their best haul would come from seizing goods from citizens who lack the resources to win them back. In one highly publicized case that occurred in 1991, federal authorities at the Nashville airport took more than $9,000 in cash from Willie Jones, a black landscaper who was flying to Houston in order to purchase shrubs. According to the police, that money could have been used to purchase drugs. After spending thousands of dollars and two years on the case, the landscaper was able to convince the courts to return most of the seized cash.
Sam Thach, a Vietnamese immigrant, found himself in a similar situation last year. He was relieved of $147,000 by the DEA while traveling on Amtrak. Thach was investigated because the details of his ticket purchase, which Amtrak shared with the DEA, "fit the profile" of a drug courier. He was not charged with any crime and is now fighting to retrieve his money in federal court. (See "Railway Bandits," Citings, July.)
When the University of Pennsylvania study and the study by Mast, Benson, and Rasmussen are considered in tandem, the implication is clear. The possibility of rich pickings through asset forfeiture, combined with the higher propensity for black motorists to carry drugs, provides police departments with a tremendous incentive to engage in racial profiling. It is hardly surprising, then, that police take the bait, even at the cost of racial bias accusations and investigations.
Last year, in reaction to high-profile cases of abuse, Congress passed legislation that changed the standard in federal civil asset forfeiture cases. Rather than showing "probable cause" that property was connected to a crime, the feds must now demonstrate "by a preponderance of the evidence" that the property was used in or is the product of a crime, a significantly higher legal standard. The revised law also awards legal fees to defendants who successfully challenge property seizures and gives judges more latitude to return seized property. Exactly what effect the law will have on federal agents, or on state and local cops, is not yet clear.
Editor's Note: We invite comments and request that they be civil and on-topic. We do not moderate or assume any responsibility for comments, which are owned by the readers who post them. Comments do not represent the views of Reason.com or Reason Foundation. We reserve the right to delete any comment for any reason at any time.
Jagwar|1.23.10 @ 5:54PM|#
You mother fucks always discriminate us and you will soon see
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HM|2.16.10 @ 1:14AM|#
This is not fair. Each personhas his or her personality,do not judge from the race. This is streotype.
Mubaraka |2.16.10 @ 1:14AM|#
I think tgis is happened a lot in America beacuse tgey think that black people are bad. although, i see that is wrong beaucse the police officr must check before give the judgment and see why this man was driving very fast ( the reason)
Mohamed Salem |2.16.10 @ 1:15AM|#
They should respect and deal with all of them fair even they are from diffrent race.
F. A|2.16.10 @ 1:16AM|#
The police should deal with all people equally. Because, differences dealing between people causes many problem in the country.
ECAE|2.16.10 @ 1:17AM|#
This article have many difficult vocabulary, so not everyone can read it.
The reader will find some difficulties to read this article, when they will start reading they will face issues that will change their mind in complete reading this article.
If the article was written in a simple vocabulary it will ba great.
Afari Alernast|2.16.10 @ 1:17AM|#
It is wrong way or stopping the pepole beacuse we should not gudge the peopole by there color. And should thier police to del with pepole equal =)
Jood|2.16.10 @ 1:18AM|#
Police job request to respect each one and deal with all in same way.
Everyone are same that dosen't deponds on the cultuers or the countries all we are same.
Nuha|2.16.10 @ 1:19AM|#
The policemen should not judge from the the first look. The man who drives like a drug trader could look cute, but they hide what they feel.
F. A.|2.16.10 @ 4:08AM|#
all countries have racial profiling but with some education people are trying to be more open.
sh|2.16.10 @ 4:14AM|#
All people are equal and police must respect all. there is no different between people in their race
sho sho|2.16.10 @ 4:14AM|#
It is not fair to discriminate people by their faces or their skin because all of us are human and we have different faces and different skin. SO, we should treat people equally.
Eiman|2.16.10 @ 4:19AM|#
The personality of a person is not related to the external appearence. Sometimes people are surprising and not what we expect. So, this is not fair.
Super Junior |2.16.10 @ 4:20AM|#
Our Islam saves our dignity by prohibiting this issue .. that why i proud i am Muslim =D
thanks Allah
Dong Hae
AA|2.16.10 @ 4:20AM|#
IN MY OPINION THERE AER NO DIIFRENT BETWEEN WHITE AND BLACK PEOPLE.DIFFRENCE DEALING CAUSES MANY PROBLEMS IN THE COUNTRY.COLOR IS NOT THE BASIC THING TO JUDGE THEM BECAUSE EVRYONE HAS THE SAME RULES IN THE COUNTY AND ALSO THEY HAS OPPERUNITY TO DO THE SAME THINGS.
Al muharrami *-*|2.16.10 @ 4:20AM|#
I think they should make a balnce between the white and black person.
Also, they must deal with them equally and both of them are same, same and same^^
We must judge the person from her or his work and effort, NOT from the race.
h|3.2.10 @ 10:21PM|#
Is everyone on here illiterate, foreign, or 7 years old? Look at the grammar mistakes. There is spell check on the comment space you know....
First off, this is a matter of U.S. affairs, not foreign affairs.
Racial profiling helps aid in preventing crimes and I am sure these radical stories like stated in the begging of the article are not "daily occurrences on our nation's highways".
To the author: Stop being so sensitive and radical. Those who used profiling correctly actually used logic, not race. Race has a factor in this logic and therefore some feel it is a racial attack.
|9.29.10 @ 7:18PM|#
Good job calling out everyone of spell check "h". However, spell check does not fix all literate issues. Such as when you wanted to say beginning, but rather said "begging".
To the rest of your comment their are several studies that have been preformed that show when officers do not use race as a means to determine whether or not someone is a suspect and instead use reasons they would have to use if we were all one same color such as behavior, their findings of drugs and related materials were 300% higher. Not to mention the fact that if allowed to act mainly off race several whites like myself would be able to be overlooked even if they are carrying drugs or even perhaps going to blow up a building. Timothy McVeigh almost alluded police due to the fact that the were acting on a profile given to them that depicted the man as that of Arab ethnicity.
h|3.2.10 @ 10:27PM|#
[Quoted from:
Jagwar|1.23.10 @ 5:54PM|#
You mother fucks always discriminate us and you will soon see]
Threats....Good job in proving my point. Nice hostility.
nfl jerseys|11.14.10 @ 8:28PM|#
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