Pride and Prejudice

Our feelings we with difficulty smother
When constabulary duty's to be done:
Ah, take one consideration with another,
A policeman's lot is not a happy one!

-W.H. Gilbert-

You can't prove a negative, at least that's what the old saw says. I've never wasted  much thought on it but maybe it's time, because we're often required to "prove" to authorities that the cash in our pockets isn't the wages of sin, that we're not trying to break into our own homes, that we aren't inebriated behind the wheel and many other variations on the "who are you?" theme.  How does a woman, for instance, prove to a L.A.P.D. officer that she's not expecting payment for "making out" with her "boyfriend" in his expensive car?  Not by refusing to produce some kind of ID and claiming it's a constitutional offense to ask for it, I would suggest. How many teenagers have been asked for ID by the constabulary in those secluded parking places we used to frequent?   How many times was I stopped either driving or walking, way back in my long hair days?  Sure that's profiling, but is profiling based on behavior forgivable, even necessary?  Isn't it understandable prejudice to suspect the man in the ski mask entering the bank?

It's hard to fault anyone for suspecting that any particular Los Angeles  police officer might be someone prone to prejudice. It's well within the range of possibility, and like many people I tend toward that human proclivity toward prejudice against authority even while I recognize the need for it.  But I do see that sometimes it's impossible to prove one is not prejudiced because in a sense, prejudice is another word for learning from experience. I try not to overuse the accusation. I wonder too if  the policeman's problem of determining who is who and up to what by looking  can be a problem in our brave new world  where everyone tries to dress down as much as possible. At the risk of  hearing the "blame the victim" argument I'll suggest that when everyone looks like a bum, a policeman's lot is not a happy one.

So did the officer suspect the woman sitting in a Mercedes wearing a worn, faded and flimsy tee shirt and trashy shorts of being a prostitute because she was black,  or because she fit the legitimate profile which includes abusively refusing to give a name and address upon official request?  Does it matter?  It does if  you're trying to fit the "incident" into that well worn Procrustean bed of  racism and police conduct. It matters if you're to be accused of  "blaming the victim" which one must never do even if the victim's behavior was part, or even the origin of the problem. 

Interracial couples may no longer be illegal, but they still aren't terribly common. My wife and I still get looks and especially in the South but what seems like racism may only be curiosity.  I grant the benefit of the doubt.   But  one really doesn't see people making out in cars during the day and with a door open. Questions are raised because things do exhibit patterns even if all that quacks is not a duck, all that glisters is not gold and all passionate intimacy is not commercial but sometimes a duck really is a duck. If ducks are illegal, the cop has to ask.

Policemen after all,  are paid to be suspicious and face it, to refuse to identify oneself  upon request is in itself a suspicious act.  My point is that it's common for a cop to ask you who you are and what you're doing and it falls far short of  search and seizure.  "My name is Danielle Watts and I work here at CBS"  may well have been enough to have produced a " thank you miss, sorry to bother you, have a good day" than handcuffs.   Do we have the right to assume the cop was out of  line and is acting so any different than prejudice on our part? 

Yes, that old bill of rights (remember that?) used to require probable cause for a search, and asking for identification may not really be covered by the fourth amendment but even so, the question is moot because in recent years, it doesn't apply within 100 miles of  a border.  Even without the Border Search exemption which allows search without cause for the majority of Americans a policeman asking for identification is hardly a violation of our civil rights even if  he's making a presumption  based on ethnicity or color or hair length or facial tattoos, a ski mask in August or questionable attire, it's not necessarily evidence of some official misconduct or private malice.  Any policeman would probably take my false assertion that I don't need to show identification as a good reason to suspect I had outstanding warrants or was up to no good.  It's like saying "don't look in the trunk - there's nothing in the trunk" at a traffic stop.  It's looking for trouble and being offended when you get it.  Is a deliberate victim really a victim at all?