Juror Speaking Out on Anderson Cooper 360

[Igel]

120. They're not the same thing.

"Racial profilig"--that's what "profiling" is short for--is profiling on the basis of race.

You see a young adult Latino and you think, as a cop, "Ooh, a Latino kid. They're all thugs and always up to no good." So you give them special scrutiny, you pull the kid over because he's in a nice upscale subdivision, you read something into the fact that when he tries to do something he pushes the "on" button of the radio and it's playing opera. If you're in a low-scale area, you look them all over because you just know they've done something wrong. It's just a matter of what. Why? Because they're young Latino males.

That's all you got. Race, ethnicity, their sex, and your stereotype. That's stereotyping, if not racism. Fine line between the two and it's hard to know where.

If you have a description of suspects, you'd be an idiot to ignore it. "Black male, upper teens or early 20". Sort of a broad description, but it happens. Cross-racial face recognition is fairly poor. But you'd be an idiot to pay special attention to middle-aged white women if that's your description. Sure, the description might be wrong. Not the way to bet

Racial proifling? Nope. Eyewitness description. That's common sense.