Saturday, December 4, 2010

McIlheran: Fighting Racism Is Pointless

Once again the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel wastes paper and expensive ink by giving some of its precious space to Patrick McIlheran, who now has a beef with a new law requiring police to keep track of who they stop. He feels it's pointless because all cops know that it is wrong to stop someone just on the basis of the color of their skin:
There could be some value, Jungbluth says, if the exercise reassures the worried that police aren't stopping people on account of race. Lawmen already get that, however. They're trained that racial profiling will end their careers.
He's correct if he's talking about the good cops. Unfortunately, while most law enforcement officers are good people, not all cops are good cops, and there is still a lot of evidence of institutional racism.

Or perhaps Paddy thinks that is what makes them good cops...

3 comments:

  1. From dad29: "We will be required to collect all stop data, vehicle data, occupant data, reason and outcome data and search data. The new form will require 46 different data fields, 23 of which are collected via the citation, with an additional 16 data fields required should the officer search the vehicle and even more data fields should the driver or passengers be searched."
    It's one thing put down what the race of the driver and maybe passengers are, but to have to fill out a form like this everytime you pull someone is just plain stupid.

    ReplyDelete
  2. No, it's called accountability.

    ReplyDelete
  3. something the police are not familiar with. there is a long and bloody history of police murdering African-Americans under the flimsiest of pretenses and and then being acquitted. so let's hold police accountable before the tragedy takes place.

    ReplyDelete