In an article about police shootings in last Sunday’s New York Times (8/31), Michael Wines disputes the conventional wisdom about a disproportionate number of African-Americans being shot by police, saying there are no data one way or another. But Wines revives the canard about blacks being disproportionately targeted in traffic stops.
There
actually is a study for that.
Throughout
the 1990s, the nation was fixated on tales of jack-booted New Jersey state
troopers who were stopping speeders on the turnpike just because they were
black! In a 2000 primary debate, Vice President Al Gore sneered at then-New
Jersey Sen. Bill Bradley, saying, “Racial profiling practically began in New
Jersey, Senator Bradley.” Attorney
General Eric Holder recently paid tribute to the myth, claiming that when he
was in college, he had been stopped “driving from New York to Washington.” He
didn’t mention how fast he was going....
Being
denounced as virtual Klansmen, the state troopers demanded a real study. Confident
that any new study would merely serve to confirm the troopers’ racism, the DOJ
and the New Jersey attorney general commissioned a statistical investigation
from the Public Services Research Institute in Maryland........To Read More....
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