Originally Posted By: Al
Originally Posted By: CivicFan
Wait a minute. That would mean that all white males would be profiled because of the right-wing terrorism like the Oklahoma bombing and such.
Ummm one incident vs action of untold actions of Young Eastern men..Read the paper or news much??
No offense Al, but have you been reading the newspaper very often? "one incident"? You obviously just aren't paying attention:
http://www.cfr.org/terrorist-organizations/militant-extremists-united-states/p9236
The most likely terrorist you're going to find in the US is probably a white male. Here's the face of the most recent terrorist in my home state:
http://www.kxly.com/news/27140311/detail.html
But the fear-mongering over terrorism has nothing to do with this guy. This is a case of poor police work, pure and simple. I understand why the guy was profiled, and I think race was probably a very small component of it; he looked sketchy. If he was a white dude with nappy dreadlocks who hadn't showered in a few weeks, with skin tags on his face--and he was driving 5mph under the speed limit, I'm going to bet he would have been pulled over. I'm also going to bet that you or I would not have been pulled over. And that's the point. It's OK to be "suspicious", but follow the law--because that's the system we have. I don't want to live somewhere where "looking suspicious" is the only justification needed for pulling over someone. And the claim that 5mph was "suspicious" is ridiculous. This case never would have survived on appeal.
Look, I imagine I want the same thing as you-I want bad guys to go to jail, and I want the law enforced evenly and fairly; but what I'm thankful for is that we live in a system that relies on codified law, not the whim of what someone thinks is 'reasonable', because while that may sound good in theory, one person's reasonable may not equal another. Lots of atrocities were committed under the guise of being 'reasonable'. While the system we have certainly isn't perfect, and people like to point out examples of where it falls down on both ends (killers getting a walk on a technicality, police framing innocent people), and there are always improvements to be made, the rule of law works pretty well.