Profiling

2. Profiling • Is an investigative tool that is intended to help investigators to profile unknown criminal subjects or offenders. • The three main goals of criminal profiling: • 1. to provide law enforcement with an understanding of the offender; try to guess when or where it will happen next • 2. to provide law enforcement with a “psychological evaluation of the offender” how they think • 3. to give suggestions and strategies that will help capture them

3. The most basic kind of profiling is a Be On the Lookout (BOLO) or • All-Points Bulletin (APB). • An APB is a description of a specific suspect accused of committing a specific crime or crimes, usually based on eyewitness accounts.

4. For example, following a bank robbery, police might interview suspects and review surveillance camera footage before releasing the following APB: • Suspect was last seen in a dark blue Ford pick-up truck. He was wearing a red T-shirt and black jeans. Suspect is described as a black male, 5-feet 10-inches tall and thin with receding hair. He has a tattoo of a snake on his left forearm.

5. Including a suspect's skin color is common, and not usually controversial. It is simply a physical description based on visual evidence gathered at the crime scene. • The next step in profiling is the psychological profile. • Investigators create this type of profile in the absence of physical evidence or eyewitness descriptions, or to supplement such descriptions. • They take what they know about an unknown suspect and his actions and try to generate additional information.

6. What is Predictive Profiling? • Instead of seeking a particular suspect based on evidence at a specific crime, predictive profiling attempts to guess which people are likely to commit a crime that hasn't happened yet. • Police officers don't just react to crimes: They patrol, observe and try to spot suspicious behavior that could mean a crime is going to take place.

7. Few people would question an officers' right to investigate a suspicious situation or question a suspicious person. • Even when police departments use their criminal profiles as a justification for searches and arrests without warrants, those practices have been upheld by the Supreme Court.

8. Here's an example. State troopers are patrolling a stretch of highway known to be frequented by drug traffickers. The officers know from previous experience that drug traffickers often use rented cars (usually large sedans or SUVs), travel in the very early morning, and put the spare tire in the backseat to leave more room in the trunk for drugs. • At 4:00 a.m., an officer notices a car that fits this profile. The driver is not breaking any major traffic rules, but the trooper pulls the car over anyway, hoping to spot some evidence that could lead to a search of the car. This is considered profiling.

9. This kind of profiling can occur when the high-level officials create a policy and program that instructs officers to investigate people who fit a specific profile. • It can also be part of an unofficial policy, an aspect of the police department's culture passed down from veteran cops to newcomers on the force. • Sometimes it simply results from an officer's experience. After years on the job, he has learned what signs might indicate criminal activity

10. That kind of profile is not only legal, it's considered good police work. • Some profiling practices come under legal fire because they might violate the U.S. Constitution

11. If police officers use criminal profiles that include race as factor, they violate both the Fourth and the Fourteenth Amendment. • Probable cause means that police can't search a home, car or person without some kind of justification -- usually, a reasonable belief that they will find evidence of a crime there, or stop a crime in progress

12. The main question surrounding profiling is this: If a person fits a criminal profile, in the absence of any other evidence of a crime, does that by itself constitute probable cause? • In the case of United States v. Sokolow, the U.S. Supreme Court did decide that a "totality" of evidence leading officers to conclude that the suspect is probably engaged criminal activity is enough to justify an arrest and a search.

13. During a traffic stop, an officer can take several different actions that require different kinds of probable cause for them to be legal • What can Police do Legally at a Traffic Stop? • 1. To legally pull someone over, an officer needs to have witnessed a traffic violation or another crime committed by someone in the car • If the car and its occupants fit a criminal profile, the officer can make a stop as long as he can describe specific factors that fit the profile.

14. The race or skin color of the driver and occupants can't come into play • 2. Questioning the suspect, if the vehicle seems suspicious, the officer may just want to question the occupants • He can look at anything in plain view in the car. However, he does not have sufficient cause yet to enter and search the car. • 3. If the actions of the suspects or the contents of their car raise further suspicions, the officer can ask the driver for consent to search the car. • No one is ever required to say yes, but if they do, the officer needs no additional cause.

15. The officer is not required to tell the suspect that he can refuse consent (at least, not under federal law -- some states may have laws requiring this notification). • This aspect is controversial because not everyone is aware of their right to refuse consent, and many people say yes out of fear or the feeling that the officer will do the search anyway. • 4. If consent is refused, the officer may detain the suspects for a reasonable amount of time. • wait times up to 90 minutes have been allowed by federal courts

16. 5. The alert of a drug-sniffing dog, or seeing drugs or weapons sitting in plain sight inside the car are the most commonly accepted forms of probable cause. • If the officer performs any of these actions without probable cause, then any evidence gathered as a result will not be allowed court. • This could make it very difficult to successfully prosecute the suspect.

23. Police Profiling • http://www.cnn.com/video/data/2.0/video/us/2009/07/26/nr.racial.profiling.cnn.html • Flying while Muslim • http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2952394158092697182# • http://abcnews.go.com/video/playerIndex?id=9439891 • Dwb • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RhXU-2EJDE&feature=related

24. Racial Profiling Racial profiling occurs when race is used by law enforcement or private security officials, to any degree, as a basis for criminal suspicion in non-suspect specific investigations. The most common example of police racial profiling is "DWB", otherwise known as "driving while black".  While racial profiling is illegal, a 1996 Supreme Court decision allows police to stop motorists and search their vehicles if they believe trafficking illegal drugs or weapons.

25. More traffic stops leads to more arrests. Studies have shown that African Americans are far more likely to be stopped and searched. • In fact, black cops on average pull over the same number of black drivers as white cops do • In 2006, the New York City Police Department (NYPD) stopped a half-million pedestrians for suspected criminal involvement. 89% of the stops involved nonwhites. • Census data for 2000 indicates that blacks make up 12.3 percent of the U.S. population, yet they roughly make up 40 percent of all prison inmates • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKaiNMOkpnA • http://www.city-journal.org/html/11_2_the_myth.html

26. Racial Profiling • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mc-borUONCU&feature=related • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKaiNMOkpnA • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Sl_5IiECqw&NR=1 • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epiFcz79CP4&NR=1

29. Post-9/11 Profiling • After the September 11, 2001 attack on the United States, the country is particularly sensitive to airport security screenings. • A disproportionate number of "Arab-looking" people have been detained, searched or questioned at airport security checkpoints. • Some people claim this only makes sense, based on the ethnic backgrounds of the 9/11 attackers. • However, such practices would violate civil rights law, and at least one expert has pointed out that focusing only on Middle-Eastern people would do more harm than good. • U.S. airports should use racial and religious profiling • http://www.bloomberg.com/video/64898664-u-s-airports-should-use-racial-and-religious-profiling.html

30. The Islamic veil across Europe • http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-13038095 • Muslim Experiment • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bz25PPwUrRI • Shopping While Black Social Experiment • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWtiPcX-mZ0 • ABC News PrimeTime Live Driving while Black • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RhXU-2EJDE

32. Wednesday, August 16: Ann Coulter writes: • “What stopped last week’s terrorist attack was ethnic profiling. We don’t know the details of the British intelligence work that nabbed the 24 Muslims because The New York Times has not been able to obtain that classified information and publish it on its front page yet. But it is a fact that you could not catch 24 Muslim terrorists by surveilling everyone in Britain equally…Without the ethnic profiling going on outside of airports, no security procedure currently permissible inside airports would have prevented a terrorist attack that would have left thousands dead.”

33. Religious Profiling • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x36HlqF7Bg4

34. http://video.foxbusiness.com/v/4441560/should-airports-use-racial-religious-profilinghttp://video.foxbusiness.com/v/4441560/should-airports-use-racial-religious-profiling • The Patriot Act • http://www.fincen.gov/statutes_regs/patriot/ • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USA_PATRIOT_Act