Profiling as needed.

• Author: London, Herbert

George Orwell is reputed to have said that the first duty of intelligent people is to restate the obvious. (1) I am going to talk primarily about the obvious. Certainly, this is not going to be an exercise in jurisprudence. I happen to agree with everything that Professor Lund argued, and yet, I arrive at the opposite conclusion. (2) I think that the points he made are valid, and the most significant point that he made I would regard as the obvious. Let me refer to the obvious. Secretary Mineta, who is the Secretary of Transportation in the George W. Bush administration, made it perfectly clear that he is opposed to profiling, as are all the members of the Bush administration--at least formally. (3) I happen to concur with the stance that has been taken by the Bush administration. However, when we talk about eliminating profiling, one must argue that there is profiling that goes on all of the time. All of us are engaged in profiling to one degree or another. For example, Mr. Mineta says that not all Islamic people are terrorists. (4) Indeed, nothing could be more obvious. However, it is also true that people who engage in terror worldwide--whether it is in Bali, at the World Trade Center, or the Pentagon--happen to be radical Islamists. So while we say on the one hand that we are not engaging in profiling--indeed, we do. Common sense would dictate that some form of profiling goes on all of the time in the area of law enforcement even if it is not formal.

All you have to do is spend a little time at the police department in New York City as I have on numerous occasions. If you are in Washington Heights you know that the cocaine traffic is pretty much controlled by the Dominican population. That is not to suggest that every Dominican is engaged in cocaine trafficking--that is absurd. But it is also very fair to say that cocaine traffic is controlled by Dominicans. On the other hand, the heroin traffic is pretty much controlled by Jamaicans. That is not to argue that every Jamaican is engaged in the heroin traffic. But every cop in Washington Heights would know that if you are going to look for people who are distributing heroin, you are probably better off starting with the Jamaican population.

What does the terrorist attack suggest? Something very similar and equally obvious. Most of the people who engaged in the attack on the United States carried Saudi Arabian passports. Does that mean that everyone in Saudi Arabia is engaged in terrorist acts? Of course not. But it is also true that if you are engaged in law enforcement, one of the first and very obvious things that you would do is look very carefully at someone carrying a Saudi Arabian passport and look who is on an airplane in the United States.

New Jersey is a very good example; precisely the example that Professor Lund raised. He talked about speeding on the highway and the fact that a disproportionate...