California Conservative

On 9/11/01, four airliners were hijacked and destroyed and thousands of people were killed by:

a) Bugs Bunny, Wiley E. Coyote, Daffy Duck, and Elmer Fudd
b) The Supreme Court of Florida
c) Mr. Bean
d) Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40

The humor of this parody-quiz comes not from answer d, but from the realization that some Americans aren’t sure.

It’s not that those people are stupid. After all, if I pressed Gore-Lieberman bumper-stickers to their foreheads they would probably know who did it. Their stupidity is not a consequence of prenatal trauma or genetic mutation, but of a deliberate refusal to accept the obvious out of fear of appearing judgmental or racist (yikes!).

It is bad enough when white cops ignore brown gang members to avoid false racial complaints, but when America’s elected leaders and institutions implement costly and unnecessary procedures to avoid offending a few Muslims, the great majority of cooperative Americans suffer civil rights violations far more unreasonable and intrusive than the handful of false complaints that TSA hopes to avoid.

Think of it this way: If LAPD Chief William Bratton ordered cops to conduct thousands of random vehicle searches (red-car Monday, green-car Tuesday, etc.) in the hopes of finding a cache of drugs or weapons, Uday and Qusay Hussein would leap from their graves to decry Bratton’s reckless trampling of human rights.

As absurd as this scenario is, this is precisely what the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has done since 9/11. To avoid offending a mouthy minority of indignant Muslim passengers, the TSA randomly gropes and fondles millions of grandparents and children at a cost of billions of dollars each year.

I’m not advocating the loss of common sense either. But when air marshals detained Army Lt. Col. Bob Rajcoomar, their mistreatment of him identified TSA’s inferior training and supervision, rather than some form of racial profiling.

To understand what racial profiling is, one must first understand probable cause.

Probable Cause

As it pertains to stopping and searching individuals, a police officer must have a reasonable suspicion that 1) a crime is or has occurred, and 2) that an individual is connected to it. Unless these two elements exist, police officers have no right to detain someone.

To explain further, let’s say that several tall, blond women have robbed Korean tourists in Korea Town ATMs in the past two weeks. As I patrol the area, I spot a tall blond woman standing behind a line of Koreans waiting to use the ATM. When I detain her, she admits that she does not have a bank account and is “waiting for a friend.” She appears nervous. I search her purse and discover a handgun, credit cards, and ID of a Korean man who was recently robbed.

Had I been forced to ignore the woman’s hair, gender, and complexion, I would not have the probable cause to approach her. But because I considered her race and complexion, profiling allowed me to ignore the dozen Koreans standing in line who weren’t suspected, so I could focus on the blond who was. But if TSA was in on the arrest, they would have searched the Korean women to make it look fair.

Let’s Profile

If I’m looking for three blonds, racial profiling lets me ignore millions of brunettes. If I’m screening for Muslim men between the ages of 17 and 40, I can exclude millions of soldiers, grandparents, and red-haired girls named Chelsea – at least until al Qaeda operatives start changing their names. And when they do, let’s pray that TSA will properly train screeners and air marshals to question Osama look-alikes named Chelsea.

And until Michael Moore and Hillary Clinton embrace Jihad and threaten to blow themselves up on airplanes, there’s no reason to confiscate their creams and lubricants.

RELATED:
Michelle Malkin: “British Discuss Profiling for Security”
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Clark Baker is a senior contributor to CaliforniaConservative.org. He is an author, filmaker, father and retired LAPD officer. You may read more of his work here and here.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 14th, 2006 at 10:21 am and is filed under Author: Clark Baker, Domestic Policies, Law. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.