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p>NYC police chief Ray Kelly agrees that racial profiling is trivially defeated by terrorists and too dangerous to rely on:‘I think profiling is just nuts’
— NYC police chief
Ray Kelly
“If you look at the London bombings, you have three British citizens of Pakistani descent. You have Germaine Lindsay, who is Jamaican. You have the next crew, on July 21st, who are East African. You have a Chechen woman in Moscow in early 2004 who blows herself up in the subway station. So whom do you profile? Look at New York City. Forty percent of New Yorkers are born outside the country… Who am I supposed to profile?… Could a terrorist dress up as a Hasidic Jew and walk into the subway, and not be profiled? Yes. I think profiling is just nuts.” [Link]
The author of this New Yorker piece, Malcolm Gladwell, explains that a racial profile fails against an adaptive foe:
… what the jihadis seemed to have done in London [was that] they switched to East Africans because the scrutiny of young Arab and Pakistani men grew too intense. It doesn’t work to generalize about a relationship between a category and a trait when that relationship isn’t stable–or when the act of generalizing may itself change the basis of the generalization. [Link]
Kelly had previously eliminated ineffective profiling in the U.S. Customs Service:
… he overhauled the criteria that border-control officers use to identify and search suspected smugglers. There had been a list of forty-three suspicious traits. He replaced it with a list of six broad criteria. Is there something suspicious about their physical appearance? Are they nervous? Is there specific intelligence targeting this person? Does the drug-sniffing dog raise an alarm? Is there something amiss in their paperwork or explanations? Has contraband been found that implicates this person?
You’ll find nothing here about race or gender or ethnicity, and nothing here about expensive jewelry or deplaning at the middle or the end, or walking briskly or walking aimlessly. Kelly removed all the unstable generalizations, forcing customs officers to make generalizations about things that don’t change from one day or one month to the next…After Kelly’s reforms, the number of searches conducted by the Customs Service dropped by about seventy-five per cent, but the number of successful seizures improved by twenty-five per cent. [Link]
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p>Like I said, search for bombs, not people. You’d think Gladwell would favor judgments in a blink, but not so. He sees parallels to the city of Ottawa banning pit bulls after some of them attacked a baby. The dogs were owned by an Ottawan named Shridev Café, which sounds more like a pakora bar than a negligent pooch owner:
… the city could easily have prevented the second attack with the right kind of generalization–a generalization based not on breed but on the known and meaningful connection between dangerous dogs and negligent owners. But that would have required… a more exacting set of generalizations to be more exactingly applied. It’s always easier just to ban the breed. [Link]
‘Ban the breed’ leads the Sepias for Worst Metaphor of the Year. But hey, it’s only February.
Related to the issue of generalizing on the basis of race, is generalizing on certain behavioral traits. Kelly’s example is appropriate. However, at least until recently, the FAA used to pull aside people travelling on one-way tickets for extra scrutiny. Maybe I’m stupid, but if I want to try some funny business on a plane and I know that one-way travel is suspicious, I’m not gonna stint on buying a return ticket. Heck, even business class if that makes it easier to jump the queue.
Some Persians (mostly Iranians) tick “white” in the race check-box. So, I am guessing a Hizbollah operative would slip through the “breed” filter.
Also, in my experience “random” checks are fewer if I am traveling for business purposes (i.e. if corporation purchased the entire itinerary).
Wow …some common sense at last!!!
Targetting any particular race in NY would be hazardous for the entire city.
“You have Germaine Lindsay, who is Jamaican. You have the next crew, on July 21st, who are East African.”
And besides, after the London bombing can you imagine stopping “kuloos” left and right for looking suspicious, and not getting a black eye in return…. Us brown folk are at least placid and cooperative when having to endure such irritating searches.
It’s a good thing the NYPD got Kelly. It desperately needed him to bring some top down attitude shifts after the bad rap the NYPD got over Dialo. He’s a career officer and understands it better than anyone else. What an impressive resume this guy has, Vietnam Vet, Marine Corps, Treasury, Secret Service, US Customs, Commissioner twice, 31 years as a cop etc etc
The problem isn’t however the definition at the top (which takes time to trickle down). We spent months bombarded with images of 19 hijackers that had a similar look in an event that caused a lot of hurt and anger for people. It’s hard for people to shake that off. The NYPD is no different in that approach. I sincerely hope that Kelly takes measures and works towards educating them to spot a criminal irrespective of the color of his/her skin.
Double take: ‘Some Persians (mostly Iranians) tick “white” in the race check-box”.
I understand nowadays the proper noun Persian refers to the cat breed. So this comment means we have pampered pussycats wielding a mean claw to affirm their honky status. This is in some way appropriate as some (not all) Persians do indeed have not only white fur but also blue eyes. I think I need another spliff.
Perhaps there is an obscure usage of “Persian” of which I am unaware that includes all speakers of the Iranian family of languages, ie. Kurds, Iranians, Pathans, etc. That would make Iranians a significant subgroup of Persians and restore sanity to the quoted remark. Can anyone confirm that this is the case?
People from Iran I know of seem to use Persia and Persian as a word that connotes the great empire. Iran is just the current political state with unfortunate leadership. It’s a poltical word, such as Myamar connotes the military dictatorship but Burma references membership in the long line of noble history in the region.
wonderful post. the first part was even better than this. i think the point about searching for the factual situations which are ripe for terrorism is better than chasing after ghosts in the nigh, is the most astute of all the reasons for changing our approach.
Raymond Kelly is my new hero. I wish more public officials were this sharp-minded and responsible, not to mention effective.