Neutral, Bias-Free

Now here's a big surprise. A study, published in the Canadian Journal of Law and Society, claims ongoing "whitewashing" of criminal data is making for a frustrated research group, unable to gauge whether police are dealing with racial and ethnic minority groups in an equitable manner. Many Canadian police agencies, it would appear go out of their way to flummox these researchers' proclivity to highlight incidents of 'racial profiling' through the simple expedient of not making note of the ethnicity or race of those whom they apprehend.

Isn't that neutral enough? Evidently not, the theory seeming to be that racial profiling continues apace, it's just kept a dirty little secret. Sure enough, police forces are well acquainted with the end results of identifying alleged malefactors through the fact that they represent as visible minorities. We've long heard, and it's likely a fairly correct interpretation of events as they occur, that police target black men driving expensive cars. Or aboriginals. For that matter, smart-ass kids, driving too fast, street racing.

If we've got a demographic whom experience has shown represents law-breakers in numbers out-representing their numbers in society, it would take a really dumbed-down police force to ignore the likelihood for the preferred option of accepting that their gut instinct hasn't served them at all well. Subtle little signs that would escape the notice of the untried and uninitiated signal those with experience in the law and wrong-doing, leading them to do their jobs with all means at their disposal.

Which doesn't mean that there are not rogue police with their own agenda of racist and discriminatory proclivities which they may act upon, bringing discredit both to the police force in question when these instances are revealed, and society as a whole. But it's a safe bet that there are enough police and police forces that have had to swallow too many bitter pills of unjust and patterned accusations of racism when what they're really doing is using their discretionary intelligence to good purpose.

But the academics see it from another perspective entirely; building trust and relationships in communities where the police are regarded with suspicion, distrust and hostility. Might that be primarily because police are called all too often to investigate a higher-than-average number of illicit and/or violent incidents in those particular communities? Build trust among some, invite them to come forward and divulge information that will break the code of silence in the face of criminal acts within a social or ethnic group, then stand back as the canary gets throttled.

Can there possibly be any such thing as "bias-free policing", given that when police respond to a call, they will know in advance often just what they will be confronting, when an address is a familiar one to them? Seems that's more or less in the same category of insisting that men of Middle Eastern appearance not be looked at with suspicion when dealing with the potential of terrorism, despite that terrorism seems to have become the specialty of some men of Middle Eastern origin.

Acting Inspector Cathy Bell, a spokeswoman for the Ontario Provincial Police responded rationally enough to the criticism, that the OPP is sensitive to all cultures and races and that the collection of racial data is not considered relevant. That will have to be taken at face value. Only the police will know themselves how to conduct themselves professionally and to good effect in pursuing their mandate to serve and protect.

That's a neutral, bias-free attitude, is it not?