Kristian Williams - Our Enemies in Blue - Police and Power in America

of one occupation, for some reason, commit more theft than average, thenincreased police attention is given to persons of that occupation. Discriminationis not a factor there. If persons of Mexican, Negro, or Anglo-Saxonancestry, for some reason, contribute heavily to other forms of crime,police deployment must take that into account. From an ethnological pointof view, Negro, Mexican, and Anglo-Saxon are unscientific breakdowns;they are a fiction. From a police point of view, they are a useful fiction andshould be used as long as they remain useful.The demand that the police cease to consider race, color, and creed isan unrealistic demand. Identification is a police tool, not a police attitude. Iftraffic violations run heavily in favor of lavender colored automobiles, youmay be certain, whatever the sociological reasons for that condition, wewould give lavender automobiles more than average attention. And if thesevehicles were predominantly found in one area of the city, we would givethat area more than average attention.46These remarks clearly outline the logic of racial profiling, and reflect the flaws ofsuch logic. Parker tries to deny police bias by relocating it from the individualto the institutional level; he then defends institutional bias by denying individualprejudice. He also attempts to justify institutionalized racism by castingit in "statistical" terms. Hence, we're reassured that race-based police tacticsare not based on "a police attitude" or on a belief in the inherent criminalityof people of color, while at the same time we are urged to accept practicesdesigned to target specific populations.Parker explains unequal police attention with reference to variations in crimerates among different groups. No evidence is offered concerning these variations,but they are said to be the product of unidentified "multiple conditions," which weare assured are not the business of the police. The possibility that policing maypreserve or contribute to these "socio-economic conditions" is not discussed,though the function oi poliCIng IS Identified as "maintaining order."Put differently, Parker tries to justify the police department's discriminationwith reference to other discrimination. If this line of reasoning is accepted, thenso long as a..'1 overJ1 system of White supremacy exists, no particular aspect ofit carl be faulted. Landlords could justify discrimination in housing, or bankersin lending, just by noting that "the reason is statistical," that ''for some reason"unemployment is higher among "certain racial groups." Employers could justifydiscrimination in hiring by explaining that, statistically speaking, certain groupstend to be less qualified. And so on. The moral and political faults of such reasoningare obvious, but there is a logical fallacy as well. An individual's ability to paythe rent, to perform a job, or to obey the law, cannot be judged on the basis ofthe statistical performance of a group to which she belongsYIn the end, Parker's argument is circular; the premises assume the conclusion.It calls for intensive scrutiny of people of color based on a "disproportionateshare of the total crime" committed by them. And how do we know they commitmore crimes? Because of their contact with the criminal justice system, obviously!48David Harris explains the problem simply:In the case of consensual crimes such as drug activity and weapons offenses,arrest and incarceration rates are particularly poor measures of criminalactivity. They are much better measures of law enforcement activity . . .. Arrest84