Newspaper Article

DON'T POISON POLICING WITH RACIAL POLITICS

Heather Mac Donald is a fellow at the think tank Manhattan Institute and the author of "Are Cops Racist?" (Ivan R. Dee Publisher, 2003)., HEATHER MAC DONALD

2004

Overview

Chief [Patrick J. Harnett], a COMPSTAT expert, can engineer such a turnaround in Hartford, as long as sound policing isn't poisoned by racial politics. The chief rightly disciplined Lt. Stephen Miele, if the lieutenant did indeed order a subordinate to arrest nonwhites downtown -- an outrageous violation of a police officer's oath to uphold the laws equally. But contrary to received wisdom, such bias is rare on police forces. The greater threat to effective policing is the unfounded charge of \"racial profiling\" when officers are merely responding to crime. Here's how \"racial profiling\" junk science works: Anti-cop activists get their hands on law enforcement data, such as stop or arrest rates by race, and compare them to racial proportions in the population. If the numbers don't match, a cry of \"racism\" goes out over the land. In New York City, for example, blacks are 25 percent of the population but constitute 50 percent of all stops and frisks conducted by the NYPD. Case closed, say the cop-bashers: The police are singling out blacks for enforcement based on the color of their skin. Here's the painful dilemma that police departments face in the era of pseudo-\"racial profiling\" analysis: In responding to community demands for protection, they will generate stop-and- arrest data that can be used against them. In Hartford, for example, whites are nearly 30 percent of the population, but committed only 7 percent of violent crimes from August 2003 to August 2004 -- according to the victims. Victims reported that blacks and Hispanics, together about 78 percent of the population, committed 90 percent of all violent crimes during that period.

• Publisher: Tribune Publishing Company, LLC
• Subject: Harnett, Patrick J