An Aftermath Remedy for Racial Profiling

Before Donald Trump’s incorrect statements on stop and frisk during the first presidential debate on Monday night, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled that judges must consider whether or not black men have reasonable reason to flee in a police encounter on a case-by-case basis.

The court held unanimously that black men could potentially flee in order to avoid the humiliation of racial profiling, rather than avoid arrest because they are guilty. In the wake of a long line of tragedies, we applaud this ruling for ensuring that justifiable fear and panic in an encounter with the police is not falsely equated with culpability. Nevertheless, this ruling—which is largely a legal technicality—is in no way a solution to persisting racial profiling in policing. More proactive measures, such as increased training, accountability, and structural reforms are the ultimate solutions to the plight of minorities before the law enforcement system, but until they are enacted, courts should accordingly exercise caution in their rulings and in their interpretations of evidence.

This court decision is the result of the case Commonwealth vs. Jimmy Warren. In December 2011, Warren was stopped by police looking for suspects in a break-in in Roxbury. The police were working off of a vague description of “two men in black hooded sweat shirts and a third wearing a red hooded sweatshirt.” Warren was asked to stop by two different officers, but his refusal caused the encounter to result in a chase at gunpoint, arrest, and a charge for unlawful possession of firearm, despite the fact that Warren was innocent of the crime the police officers were initially investigating.

Though the exact prudence of Warren’s course of action may be questioned, the police should have never approached him in the first place. Indeed, there is statistical corroboration that Warren had reason to believe they were unjustifiably biased against him. The ruling was based in large part on an American Civil Liberties Union report that found that black people accounted for 63 percent of field interrogations despite composing only 24 percent of Boston’s population between 2007 and 2010.

Racial profiling, however, is not endemic to Massachusetts; it has a long history in criminal justice and policing. In traffic stops alone, black drivers are more likely to be stopped for no major reason and punished for minor traffic infractions. Data from many states has shown that police target minority communities for drug offenses, even though marijuana and other drug use rates are usually the same as or even higher for white communities. Unarmed black people are also killed by police at five times the rate of unarmed whites.

These realities make it reasonable for the black community, particularly black males, to be concerned about their safety in police encounters. In addition to the “indignity of being racially profiled” that the court found as reasonable motivation for fleeing police encounters, both judges and police officers need to realize the role of fear. Often, there are very low levels of trust in highly-policed minority communities and that trust is only eroded by the tragedies that have occurred. As the court has ruled, a black man has reason to fear that the request to stop will escalate to a more dangerous situation.

Given the current situation of our criminal justice system, we fully agree that courts should consider how fear and racial profiling can affect a defendant’s actions. However, for real change to be made, greater structural reform is necessary. The fear and anxiety that people feel in encounters with the police needs to be realized not only by court justices, but by the policemen and women who initiate the interactions.