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American Muslim Perspective report - Sept. 13, 2004
Amnesty International USA Study:
Racial profiling under the guise of fighting terrorism
Racial profiling by US law enforcement agencies has increased over the past three years and now affects one in nine Americans, according to an Amnesty International USA report released on Sept. 13, 2004 in Washington.
State and federal agencies, under the guise of fighting terrorism, have expanded the use of this degrading, discriminatory and dangerous practice, said Curt Goering, deputy executive director for Amnesty International USA. ”The government's reliance on racial profiling has grown dramatically since the September 11th attacks,”
AI study says that some 32 million Americans have been subject to profiling - the targeting of people because of their ethnic or religious background. Amnesty said use of profiling has seen a major increase since 9/11. Amnesty International USA came up with its estimate of nearly 32 million profiling victims by analyzing a collection of recent polls, census figures and studies. (Picture shows Honorable Timothy K. Lewis, former judge on the US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit (left) and Ms. Samina Faheem, Executive Director of the American Muslim Voice at the Amnesty International USA hearings in Oakland on racial profiling in Sept.2003.)
”Amnesty International's review of existing data shows that an estimated 32 million Americans -- a number equivalent to the population of Canada -- have been subjected to profiling and that 87 million Americans -- almost one of every three people -- are at high risk for such abuse,” he said.
The 50-page report entitled 'Threat and Humiliation,' charges that racial profiling has actually grown since the Sep. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon despite a pledge by President George W. Bush to end it. Amnesty urged the Congress to enact the End Racial Profiling Act of 2004 that has been endorsed by a bipartisan group of 140 lawmakers.
The practice may be counter-productive, as the recent cases of the so-called ”American Taliban”, John Walker Lindh, and British ”shoe bomber” Richard Reid illustrate. Neither individual fit the profile used by programs like the National Security Entry Exit Registration System (NSEERS) and US-VISIT that target Arab, Muslim, and South Asian men and boys.
The report also points to the case of Timothy McVeigh, who eluded arrest while law enforcement agencies searched for Arab suspects after the 1993 Oklahoma City federal building bombing, or to another as far back as 1901, when President William McKinley's assassin, a native-born white man, slipped past Secret Service agents who were on the lookout for a presumably foreign-born, ”dark complexioned man with a moustache”.
Similarly, investigators lost valuable time in tracking down the ”Washington sniper” responsible for a dozen shootings in 2002 in part because the two black men convicted of the attacks failed to fit the profile of a serial killer -- an anti-social white male.
”This is a practice that has actually impeded effective law enforcement for many years, as any competent and experienced law enforcement official will tell you,” said retired federal Judge Timothy K. Lewis, who chaired a series of hearings on racial profiling that took place under Amnesty's auspices in a number of U.S. cities over the past year.
”Obviously, focusing first and foremost, or worse, solely upon such characteristics ...as race, ethnicity, national origin or religion in deciding whom to investigate, arrest, and prosecute ...diverts attention from actual criminal behavior and from the actual perpetrator of a crime,” he said.
”Prior to 9/11, racial profiling was frequently referred to as 'driving while black”,' the report noted. ”Now, the practice can be more accurately characterized as driving, flying, walking, worshipping, shopping or staying at home while Black, Brown, Red, Yellow, Muslim or of Middle-Eastern appearance”.
A poll conducted last month by Bendixon & Associations and co-sponsored by Amnesty found that Arab Americans were found three times more likely to have experienced racial profiling than the rest of the non-Hispanic white population and that Muslims were more likely to have experienced profiling since 9/11. Nearly half of Arab and Muslim Americans said they believe the government is using racial profiling to screen individuals for security purposes.
Among the more egregious examples cited in the report was that of an eight-year-old Muslim Boy Scout from Tulsa, Oklahoma, who was separated from his family while airport security officials searched him and dismantled his soap box derby car. The boy is now routinely stopped and searched at airports.
In another case, Kimberly ”Asma” Al-Hamsi, an observant white American Muslim who wears a hijab and walks with a crutch due to multiple sclerosis, was accosted with her son, who is deaf and has cerebral palsy, at a mall in Grapevine, Texas, by a man and two women who told her she did not belong in the country.
According to her testimony at one of the Amnesty hearings, plainclothes police intervened and told her she was being charged with terrorism, hate crimes and disorderly conduct. FBI agents were called and questioned her about her ethnicity and views on the war in Iraq, questioning to which thousands of Arab and South Asian immigrants have been subject over the past several years.
But profiling goes far beyond Muslims, Arab Americans or South Asians, according to the report. African American motorists continue to be pulled over by police all over the country as do the cars of Native Americans in some states because of the tribal tags displayed on their cars. Similarly, African Americans are frequently singled out by security in major department and other retail stores, while Asian-American in big cities find themselves detained by police who apparently suspect gang activity.
In addition to humiliating and embarrassing the victims of profiling, such practices also generate fear and reluctance to call law enforcement agencies even in the case of genuine emergencies, according to the report.
”We learned at our hearings about a Hindu-Punjabi Indian woman in her mid-60s who put out a fire in her kitchen by herself because she feared calling the fire department and a Pakistan-Muslim woman with a heart condition who said she would not dial 911 if she were having a heart attack,” Goering said.
From July 2003 to August 2004, Amnesty International  USA’s Domestic Human Rights Program studied the current state of racial profiling by law enforcement agencies in the United States. The process began with the consultation of a wide range of community organizations and the organizing of a series of public hearings across the United States throughout the fall of 2003 (San Francisco/Oakland on September 9, Tulsa on September 30, New York City on October 2, Chicago on October 18 and 20, and Dallas on November 15). At the hearings, victims, human rights advocates, experts and law enforcement officials testified about their experiences with racial profiling.
Summary of the major findings of the Amnesty International USA study:
1. A staggering number of people in the United States are subjected to racial profiling:
Approximately thirty-two million Americans, a number equivalent to the population of Canada, report they have already been victims of racial profiling.
Approximately eighty-seven million Americans are at a high risk of being subjected to future racial profiling during their lifetime.
Racial profiling directly affects Native Americans, Asian Americans, Hispanic Americans, African Americans, Arab Americans, Persian Americans, American Muslims, many immigrants and visitors, and, under certain circumstances, white Americans.
Racial profiling happens to both women and men, affects all age groups, is used against people from all socio-economic backgrounds, and occurs in rural, suburban, and urban areas.
Racial profiling of citizens and visitors of Middle Eastern and South Asian descent, and others who appear to be from these areas or members of the Muslim and Sikh faiths, has substantially increased since September 11, 2001.
2. As the testimony cited in this report shows, racial profiling occurs in almost every context of people’s lives:
While driving: A young African-American schoolteacher reports being routinely pulled over in his suburban neighborhood in San Carlos, California, where only five other African-American families live. Native Americans in Oklahoma report being routinely stopped by police because of the tribal tags displayed on their cars. In Texas, a Muslim student of South Asian ancestry is pulled over and asked by police if he is carrying any dead bodies or bombs.
While walking: In Seattle,Washington, a group of Asian-American youths are detained on a street corner by police for 45 minutes on an allegation of jaywalking. While a sergeant ultimately ordered the officer in question to release them, the young people say they saw whites repeatedly crossing the same street in an illegal manner without being stopped.
While traveling through airports: An eight-year-old Muslim boy from Tulsa, Oklahoma was reportedly separated from his family while airport security officials searched him and dismantled his Boy Scout pinewood derby car. He is now routinely stopped and searched at airports.
While shopping: In New York City, an African- American woman shopping for holiday presents was stopped by security at a major department store. She showed the guards her receipts. Nonetheless, she was taken to a holding cell in the building where every other suspect she saw was a person of color. She was subjected to threats and a body search. She was allowed to leave without being charged three hours later, but was not allowed to take her purchases.
While at home: A Latino family in a Chicago suburb was reportedly awoken at 4:50 a.m. on the day after Father’s Day by nine building inspectors and police officers who prohibited the family from getting dressed or moving about. The authorities reportedly proceeded to search the entire house to find evidence of overcrowding. Enforcement of the zoning ordinance, which was used to justify the search, was reportedly targeted at the rapidly-growing Latino population.
While traveling to and from places of worship: A Muslim imam from the Dallas area reports being stopped and arrested by police upon leaving a mosque after an outreach event. Officers stopped him, searched his vehicle, arrested him for expired vehicle tags, and confiscated his computer.
3. Despite the prevalence and serious nature of the problem—including the devastating effect that it often has on victims, their families, and their communities —no jurisdiction in the U.S. has addressed the problem in a way that is both effective and comprehensive.While as of the writing of this report 29 states have passed laws concerning racial profiling, state and federal protections against this problem continue to be grossly insufficient:
Forty-six states do not ban racial profiling based on religion or religious appearance.
Thirty-five states do not ban racial profiling of pedestrians (and the majority of the fifteen states that do, use a definition of racial profiling that makes the ban virtually unenforceable in most circumstances).
The scope of Tennessee’s current racial profiling law is so limited that it only pertains to the conditions under which fingerprint records are obtained.
In June 2003, the Department of Justice issued its Guidance Regarding the Use of Race by Federal Law Enforcement Agencies forbidding racial profiling by federal law enforcement officials. Yet, the guidance does not cover profiling based on religion, religious appearance, or national origin; does not apply to state or local law enforcement agencies; does not include any enforcement mechanisms; does not specify punishment for violating officers/agencies; and contains a blanket exception for “national security” and “border integrity” cases. The Guidance is an advisory, and hence is not legally binding.
On February 27, 2001, President Bush said, “racial profiling is wrong” and promised to “end it in America.” Yet, almost four years later he has failed to support any federal legislative effort to eliminate racial profiling in the United States.
4. When law enforcement officials focus on what people look like, what religion they follow,
or what they wear, it puts us all at risk. Several incidents in history illustrate this risk:
In 1901, President McKinley’s assassin, a white man born in Michigan, was able to conceal the murder weapon in a bandage wrapped around his arm, pass through security, and go undetected until he shot the president because secret service agents had decided to focus their attention on a “dark complexioned man with a moustache.”
In 1995, after bombing the Alfred P. Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City,Timothy McVeigh, a white male assailant later convicted of delivering the bomb alone, was able to flee while officers operated on the initial theory that ‘Arab terrorists’ had committed the attacks.
In 2002, two African-American male snipers were able to evade police and continue terrorizing residents of the nation’s capital and nearby areas. Police, relying on racially-based profiles of serial killers, were searching for antisocial white males.
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