Verified answer

I think a certain amount of profiling is OK and necessary as long as it's PART of the means by which police use to conduct investigations and do their job.

For instance, if you're a cop in neighborhood X, and let's say that 85% of the crimes in that neighborhood are committed by a person of a particular style, ethnicity or other descriptive feature, and let's add that the residents in that neighborhood are only about 5% of that same type of person. Under those circumstances, it would be foolish for cops not to use that information to do their job.

Should airline personnell do a cavity search on every passenger who wears a turban or has a Middle East passport? No, but certainly anyone of those descriptions who also have other suspicious traits they should.

Should cops pull over anyone in a White neighborhood who is Black? Again no. But if they are lingering the neighborhood, circling the area, if there are several people in the car, etc I think that is suspicious enough to at least warrant a simple question about what they are doing.

-----------------------

My friend below is correct; Most seriel killers are White guys. Unfortunately that's often where the similarities end with seriel killers, plus on the hundreds of thousands of crimes committed each year, only a handful are seriel killer related deaths.

In other words it doesn't happen often enough to really warrant profiling, though when searching for them, the FBI certainly knows what the average seriel killer statisics are and do use that to their advantage, which includes knowing they are most likely looking for a White guy.

----------------------

While I theoretically disagree with Arthur on the use of profiling. I have to give him props for having been a cop and talking about his experience. I would hope that his experience is not indicative of what goes on across the nation, as I still think the use of it, to a certain degree and when combined with other information can be useful.

After all, are we trying to catch bad guys or not upset the ACLU? I'd opt for catching bad guys every time.

Racial profiling is done mostly by white police officers. Mainly because of their hate for blacks and brown hispanics. And for no other reason . Retired brown hispanic police officer.

When are whites profiled?

Not even for serial killers, who are all white, they get profiled. Both Zodiac and Bundy were allowed to escape because the cops were looking for a black guy!