Why cops "pick on" young black men - a few choice quotes

Ed. here. Good journalists don't -- or shouldn't -- string together a bunch of quotes and call it a story. Walt does that, sometimes, but Walt is a mere blogger, not a journalist. Ronald Mascarenhas is not a journalist either. He's a Canadian management consultant. He's also something of a media favourite, writing and speaking about labour management and other timely topics. He has a piece in today's National Post entitled "In defence of carding*, and the police", from which we've lifted a few quotes from other professors and pundits.

"[Police] go where crime occurs. We go where the community calls us to go." (Toronto Deputy Chief Peter Sloly, quoted in the Toronto Star.

"I want my officers to be talking to people on the street engaging them, finding out what’s going on." (Peel Region Police Chief Jennifer Evans.

"Carding is an invaluable intelligence-gathering service. You’re recording data, setting up associations, knowing who’s involved [in gang activity]." (Police union president Mike McCormack, 2010)

"[Carding] is not necessarily discrimination and instead, is affected by where crime occurs, victimization, demographics and even policing policies and patterns." UCLA psychologist Phillip Atiba Goff, founder of the Center for Policing Equity, and an independent reviewer of the Toronto police,

"Blacks account for 8.1% of the population, [yet] they account for nearly 27 per cent of all the charges laid for violent crimes – homicides, sex assaults and gun offences," and the felons are "disproportionately Jamaican.... Our society is deeply conflicted over minority-group statistics-keeping. When it’s for socially progressive reasons, such as employment equity and affirmative action, we think it’s virtuous. But when it records negative behaviour, we think it’s terrible." (Margaret Wente, in the Globe and Mail, 2002)

"If blacks are overrepresented in the ranks of the imprisoned [in the USA], it is because blacks are overrepresented in the criminal ranks -- and the violent criminal ranks, at that." (John DiIulio, University of Pennsylvania political scientist)

"Even if racism exists, it might explain only a small part of the gap between the 11% black representation in the United States adult population and the now nearly 50% black representation among persons entering state prisons each year in the United States." (Patrick A. Langan, statistician, United States Bureau of Justice Statistics)

"Blacks commit an astoundingly disproportionate number of crimes.... Blacks constitute about 13% of the population, yet between 1976 and 2005 they committed more than half of all murders in the U.S. … So long as blacks are committing such an outsized amount of crime, young black men will be viewed suspiciously and tensions between police and crime-ridden communities will persist." (Jason L. Riley, journalist who writes in the Wall Street Journal, and author of Please Stop Helping Us: How Liberals Make It Harder for Blacks to Succeed. Mr. Riley is... errr...black.)

* Carding is what Toronto police call "the documentation of individuals for the purpose of public safety". It is analogous to the New York City police SQF -- Stop, Question and Frisk -- policy.