How Profiling Works

was born on your birthday. Yeah, isn't that crazy? One of the better days of the year. Duly take but isn't that remarkable? I think it is remarkable out of all the days. And I was literally I was just like, well, let me scroll through the celebrity birthday it's just you know, for giggles to see what you know, who shares your birthday? About three course the way down it's all your face. And I had forgotten it was your birthday because I was just in another planet. And I like, immediately I

was like, dimly, you got to see this. You'll never guess whose birthday she shares. So I think that's really neat. Um. So anyway, uh, thank you everybody for the support. Stop stop chuck, yes on behalf of every stuff you should know. A listener out there, congratulations to you and Emily. Do you feel like you can speak for them, Yes, of course, because there might be like one guy out there he's like, I don't care, he can stop listening right now. But

I do have some people to thank. Um. This happened in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and um, we stayed in this little area called East Village. It was literally like a block in this loft and airbnb loft and above pizza place and across the street from a bar. And I'll bet you have some people to think. Yeah, these people like took us in as family. It was like literally every day, you know, for ten days late. We're out there two days early, so for like two weeks they were like,

what's going on? You know, where's this baby? So I want to thank I've just been which you would love to do. This cocktail bar right up your alley. It sounds like you said cocktail bar. Yeah, And not only do they make like fresh you know, fresh ingredients, but they don't have like a thing of cucumber sliced stuff. They cucumber as needed and you know the jalapeno you would have. They were doing it right there. So Jamie and Nate and Nicole and Ian the chef at I've

just been. It was the stuff you should know. Man. Oh yeah. He came out and he was like, is it who I think it is? How fortuitous? How fortuitous? And then uh, East Village Bohemian Pizzeria. We stayed above this place and they were great. Did the smell drive you nuts all the time? But we ate a lot of people. Uh So Pat there and my boy Max, Max and I really hit it off. We're like genuine life pals now. Uh and he at the end I go to leave and I just give him a letter

saying thank you and here's my contact info. And then like, ps, by the way, I have a podcast. He's an ornithologist, he has his master's, but he's not doing that right now out you know, he's running this pizza point and just a really smart guy. Was like, I think you might like this podcast. I do. He comes up and tells me afterwards, this is like our parting words. He was like, dude, your chuck. It's like really I had

a weird like thing. He said, I knew that you seem familiar, but I didn't want to say anything, like even watched the TV show. Oh wow. So Max was like, that's probably why I didn't want to say anything. Yeah, he didn't want to bring it up. So huge thanks to those guys. And then um our caseworker Jessica Um also a stuff you should know fan. That is amazing because at the end of our first call, like a month ago, she went, all right, we've got business done.

I have something I have to admit. It's like I'm a huge man man. So it was weird. It was like the stuff you should Know nation sort of caring for me. Yeah, and all of the people like you. You put a picture of Ruby rose up. Yeah, and like broke the internet. It was it was people love the new Bores. Well yeah, but people love Chuck's newborn. But you know it could have been a puppy and probably gotten. Don't think I don't do that was very sweet. Yeah,

so that meant a lot to me. But Jessica and her two sons, Hugh and Henry, I know they are listeners to They are awesome boys. And she really took care of us, So I'm glad it worked out. Like man, three weeks in Tulsa, it was a weird and stressful and but it sounds wonderful. Yeah, good start though. Yeah, I mean we were in there. Emily helped deliver this baby, and I was in the man zone right behind. I am so proud of you guys. Yeah, I'm so happy for you guys. I also want to say Jerry is

not allowed to talk. Jerry feels the exact same way. She's, well, we could take the duck table today maybe, Jerry, how do you feel? Yes, yeah, she agreed. She just spelled out on the speaking spelled him anyway. This is not gonna become the New Baby Show. Um, she will probably disappear from uh your lives, but just know that we're all doing great and thank you for the support. Good all right, yep, nice job, Chuck, thanks man, congratulies, Thank you, sir.

Welcome to Stuff you should Know from House Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and Jerry, which means it's time for listener mail. Oh wait, wow about that. I'm brain to start. That's why we leave that in there. Do you want to yeah, or maybe I should just read listener mail. We can go home. Okay, it's a build your own episode. Yeah, it's a mad Lives, just fill it in. I'm profiling, Yeah, styling and profiling. I'm

pretty excited. Are you styling and profile? Well this is a great that's a different thing this yeah, okay, I think that has to do with um, like photography. No, thanks, styling and profile and just means you're living large. Yeah, you're fashionable and oh gotcha. Yeah, no, this is different and this is a grabst article, which is the mark of quality as we all know it is. It's refreshing to see and it is Um, we should just say right off the bat, profiling is a super divisive topic.

Oh yeah, um, there are many ways to look at it, and all they make sense sometimes on both sides. It's a tough one. Yeah, so that's my cadiat. It's divisive. So um. One thing that Grabster immediately points out is like, not all profiling is profiling, like you think of Sure, we're going to talk about all the different ways, right, There's plenty of accepted forms of profiling. And the first one, um is the standard all points bulletin or be on the lookout, right, that's the kind that no one has

a problem with. No one does because that you you know what that is. That's uh silver Toyota to come on with spy today and white male in his mid forties with spiky hair and uh sort of chubby with a big gross gray black beard has committed a crime and he's wearing cargo shorts and flip flops. Oh, I see you're describing yourself profiler, but you put in their white male. And the reason that's what I am, the reason why people don't have a problem with this is

twofold one. A crime has already been committed. Yeah, okay, I committed a crime. So the police work is finding a perpetrator that has already committed a crime. And secondly, that profile is based on eyewitness accounts descriptions of the person. That's right, So that profile is being used to to track down a specific person. Has nothing to do with anybody else. Who's white, has nothing to do with anybody else, who drives a silver Tacoma, has nothing to do with

any of that jazz. It's just this guy is suspected of having committed this crime, and he looks like this. Yeah you hear you see it on the news every night. Yes, you know it's not just cops that use this. The news will say the suspect is, you know, wearing a handsome, checkered Oxford button down, whispy hair, and white, straight teeth. Exactly, so they're describing you. Oh you think my teeth are nice? I didn't say that. I said they were white and straight.

That's nice if that's what you're into. This is coming from a guy who just found out he's about to have to lose his front tooth all over again. Start over. Yeah, man, that sucks. Which I know there are some fans out there that are laughing. Aaron Cooper, that toothless Chuck is coming back in the house for It's it's really just him. Yeah, he's the only one whould be jerky enough to laugh at that. That kind of misfortune, you know, I know, I'm sorry to bring that up. I'm just still reeling

from that discovery. It stinks. You think you get an implant and it's for life, Yeah, especially when they sell you a lifetime implant. Yea, yeah, exactly, alright. So, uh, like you said, including descriptions and skin color is not controversial in this case. No, it's in. Everybody from the FEDS to the local police are okay with that. Yeah, they're all in on it, and and not just completely like everybody's like, yeah, this is fine, this makes sense. Sure,

not a thing that's right. The next one is psychological profiling. And this is when you don't have a lot of physical evidence or you don't have an eyewitness, and you're trying to fill in the blanks and make some good guesses billy blanks based on I remember that guy. Uh, some good guesses based on like the crime scene or just the circumstances of the crime. Yes, again, a crime has already taken place, and you're trying to figure out who solved it, and you're taking salt who committed it.

You're trying to figure out who's gonna solve it, all right, all right, which you figure out the same moment when as you do when you figure out who committed it. It's interesting in mind bending, Right twice you've jumped to the end of something. It's so weird. I don't know what that means. I think you know what it means. Uh, sometimes they are vague. But wait, I hadn't finished my thought. Okay, I didn't mess it up that bad. Let me go back and finish. Um. The point is it's drawn from

available evidence. Yeah, clues, clues that you're bringing together to try to draw them up an idea of who did this right exactly? Okay, So sometimes it can be vague, but if you watch TV and movies, um, it is probably not how it really goes down, but it's super specific when you see it in fiction, right, you know, like I think this, uh as a man who was beating as a child and he probably lives alone or Sherlock Holmes was really good at that kind of thing.

So a good point of Sherlock Holmes. Yeah, that's good stuff. Uh. Did you know he was a morphine and cocaine addict? Yeah, well I guess you need both in like the original stories? Really? Yeah? Oh like in the books. Wow, not the real guy, right, as I think, Yeah, are you sure you're not just thinking of Robert Downey Jr. I mean I've read the Originals and he like does he shoots morphine in it? And and Watson is not very happy with the whole thing.

Yeah he's straight edge. No he's not straight edge, but he doesn't he's not a junkie, you know. But he didn't care. He was like Watson washed my toes. I can alright, moving on to predictive profiling. Well, yeah, this is where it starts to get a little messy. Yeah, I can get a little controversial. Even psychological profiling is a little controversial. I have to say, chuck, like, it's not a proven, tried and true thing. It's as much

a guessing game is anything else. Um, But it's not nearly still as controversial as predictive profiling, because now you're trying to say, these people will probably commit a crime, right not not not? Civil rights are it issue? Big time? Big time? Um. Police officers do great work. Ideally they're not just reacting to committed crimes, but they are um driving around the neighborhood looking for a suspicious person that might be about to commit a crime, to prevent crime,

to prevent a crime, which is stuff to do. You know, it's right place, right time in most cases. And you use the word ideally right ideally okay, yes, Um, So even when this happens, this Supreme Court is roundly um sided with police officers. UM as profiling for justification. So it's legally speaking, Okay, it's on the books. It's on the books. So so give an example of the kind of profiling that's okay to be used. UM, the one

of the articles. Great. UM, let's say you're in uh, South Florida and you're you're traveling up and you're in a it's four a m. And you're in a rented black suv with tinted windows, and you have the spare tire in the back seat removed. UM, I'm sorry, it's removed from the trunks area. It's in the backseat, just

sitting in the back seat. Might be might be a drug trafficker, right, And the cop is basing this on something like, um, a profile, Yeah, but a profile based on previous experiences with other drug dealers in the same area. Because that's a really big one right there. Like UM. One of the things for using profiles successfully is it has it's it has it has to be over a certain period of time and associated with a certain place.

So you use Miami and say Miami in right, if you saw that person and you would say, well, this is probably a cocaine trafficker based on all the other dealings with cocaine traffickers who who used the same transportation m O. Yeah, and we should point out the tires removed because you can then hide the drugs where the spare tire went, and then that's why the tires in

the back seat. Yes, so these are red flags. But if you're like in um Wyoming in two thousand fifteen and you read an article about how that held true in Miami, that is not necessarily a justifiable transference of profiling because it exists in a different time, in a different place. That's so, like you said, this can be a this can be high level policy, UM, it can be unofficial policy. It can be just merely experienced as

a police officer. That's something you've can countered from time to time and basically to determine if this profile justifies a search warrantless search, that is, in other words, you haven't gone to the judge and as applied for a warrant and had them review it and all that stuff or rubber stamp it, which we'll get to. UM, it's got a stand up in court, right, and so you

gotta be careful as a cop. You do. Um, you have to have what's called an articulable suspicion, which was established by a nineteen case or Supreme Court ruling Terry versus Ohio. And the Supreme Court said, and this is actually from a Matt ti ab Um article. It's really really worth reading. It's called Why Baltimore Blew Up. It was in Rolling Stone like a month or two ago. It's a very good article. Um. But he talks about this Terry case led to what it called Terry stops.

Whereas if a cop has a suspicion that they can put into words, meaning it's not just a hunch, right, um, that somebody is is either just committed a crime or going to commit a crime, that that is probable cause and it's bounds for as search. Yeah, and here's a had a great example here, like let's say the cop and court would say this the suspect of pure nervous made several contradictory statements. In the back seat, I saw a shoebox full of old film canisters, which drug carriers

commonly use. The car smelled like air freshener spray, which is used to cover up the smell of drugs, and I spotted them driving slowly up and down a block that I know is frequented by drug dealers. That's called good police work in court. Right, that's called like a prosecutor's dream cop. Yeah. Um, and if you if you go back and you notice all of that stuff, all of these things are based on. So a block that he knows to be frequented by drug dealers, thirty five

millimeter canisters. Maybe he read a Police Benevolent Association newsletter article about that. Um, all of this stuff together, um becomes what's called cumulative similarities. And supposedly a Florida Highway patrolman named Bob Vogel is the first guy to put this down on paper. He was very controversial, which is, you take all of these different things and put them together, and you can form a profile, and you can use that to pull somebody over and then you know, eventually

search their car if you're a Florida Highway patrolman. Right, So, um, you've got you've got all of these. Uh. You have the terry stops, which are used for broken windows policing and just for pulling people over, but they require an articulable suspicion. But they can be based on where called cumulative similarities, which is a profile either like that your police department is saying be on the lookout for people driving with their spare tire in the backseat, um at

this time of night. So far, this has all been upheld by the Supreme Court. That's right. But there's a very very fine line um that is frequently crossed, and we will talk about how that runs a foul of the Constitution right after this. All right, Josh, before we took a break, you mentioned something called the Constitution, and there are a couple of amendments that come into play when you're talking about search and seizure, probable cause, profile ancure,

and they are the fourth and fourteenth Amendments. The fourth reads and whole the right of the people to be secure in their persons. The JFK I went into him Winston Churchill. Sure, it's both houses papers and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures shall not be violated, and no warrant shall issue, but upon probable costs, supported by oath of affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched and the persons of things to be seized. So there's

some big words in there. That's right, big, big like money words like Uh, it's protection against unreasonable searches and seizures, which means, as far as the Supreme Court's concerned, some cops just can't say I'm gonna push you up against the wall and pat you down for no reason whatsoever. Yeah, Or I'm gonna pull you over for no reason, and I'm gonna search your car on the side of the road for no reason. Um, does not happen, right of course?

Not sure? So, Um, that's the Fourth Amendment, right, And uh, there's another big term in there. It's called probable cause, like you have to have And if a lot of people say that that versus Ohio ruling is just too broad in articulable suspicion, like what is that you know? Um? But even still there's there's so there has to be some sort of probable cause. And a lot of the times, as we'll see, it's just from uh, some something out in plain side or something like that. But there's a

big struggle over what constitutes probable cause. But the point is the Fourth Amendment says you have to have probable cause or else it's an unreasonable search. That's right. And uh, a police officer in most cases has to go get a warrant for like the search of a home or something. Um, And there's a whole issue of rubber stamping warrants these days of course that like the judge may not even

really review that. It's just a formality. Or for anybody who's watched enough Law and Order episodes, all you have to do is go, I smell pot. Do you smell pot? Wink wink, and then kick the door in. Yeah, exactly, because that's you can't prove that the cop didn't think you smell pot exactly. You know, was the threat of perjury,

of perjuring himself on the stand. But I imagine at least as far as like Briscoe and Green are concerned, they're hoping that they're gonna find such gang buster overwhelming evidence that everybody's gonna forget about the fake smell of pot. Um. So, there was actually a case which relates to probable calls called the US v. Sokolow that made it all the way to the Scotus And um, did you read about that case? I did? It's um it was well that

was when the ruling was right. Yeah, so what happened was the d A arrested a guy at the Honolulu airport found over a thousand grams of cocaine and his carry on. It was a key, he had a kilo and he paid uh. They the agents knew all this going into it. This is why they arrested him. He paid bucks for round trip tickets with a roll of twenty dollar bills. He traveled under a name that did

not match the name under which is telephone was listed. Um. He was originally going to Miami, and in this because lad flag at the time, he only stayed Miami for two days, even though a round trip flight from Honolulu takes twenty hours, so a very quick trip, and the others he was almost flying as long as he was there. In Miami, he met up with a man named Tony Montana. Apparently he appeared nervous and he did not check his baggage, and the district court denied motion to suppress the evidence,

said it was justifiable. The Court of Appeals disagreed and overturned that, and then eventually it went to the Supreme Court and they said no, it's okay because they had what was quote a totality of evidence. So Here's the thing though, the thing that makes that so groundbreaking and nowadays, I mean we were raised under so clow right, it seems like this is just the norm. But it was a ground break in case of the time, because nothing

none of that. It's not against the law to pay your plane ticket with cash, It's not against the law to not check your bags at the time. It wasn't against the law to travel under an assumed name. Yeah, and I don't think at the time it was against a law to go to Miami just for two days, right, exactly,

None of this is against the law. And so if you if if you just followed the strict interpretation a law up to that point there was they couldn't bust this guy, even though when they busted him they found a kilo of coke, like they knew they would in his bag. Um, there wasn't enough there. In the Supreme Court said, you know what, we we think that when you put all that stuff together, there is enough there. Now what constitutes that totality? Is it two pieces of evidence?

Is that one thing? Um? You know, how much does it take to profile? But what they were saying in so Colo was, yes, the the stuff that you've seen from other proven criminals applied to somebody else who you don't yet fully know as a criminal, is enough for you to bust them and see if you're right. Yeah. Again, it's not like the groundbreaking He didn't go straight to jail. They looked in his bag, yes, but it's do you have the right to look in the bag? That is

what it comes down to. Yeah, and they were saying that there. The Supreme Court interpretation is this stands up to the Fourth Amendment. Yeah, and I met the guy went to Miami for two days, gets your civil rights goodbye?

Uh So with the fourteenth Amendment UM it states in part that no State shall make or enforce any law which will abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the U. S H. I think everybody wants the Kennedy voice against U. I think any time you read amendments from the Bill of Rights, you have to do it like that. Nah shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law, nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction equal protection of the laws.

So this one applies. You might say, well, we've got the fourth we don't need. The fourteenth fourteen says, look, man, you can't just bust somebody without this, again, due process of law. And we have a due process of law. And what the Supreme Court did with cases like Soklo and with cases like Terry versus Ohio, UM, is they said profiling is part of the due process of law.

That's right. So one thing that they have gone back to again and again and again and again is that if race is factored in and almost any circumstances, there are circumstances that is where racial profiling is allowed in police work. But for the most part, if you're basing your suspicions of criminal wrongdoing on race largely or in part, then that is not That runs a foul of the fourth and the fourteenth amendments, and you're not allowed to

do that. Yeah. The grabs Her points out that cops, unless you are have an a p b out on a Hispanic mail or a black male, then you are supposed to be color blind as a cop. Exactly you're supposed to be. So you know, um, the Eric Garner case to Michael Brown case, um, all of these cases where you know black mails were basically stopped from either doing a petty offense or just stop based on suspicion

because they were black in their neighborhood. UM. It prompted the executive branch to release a new set of guidance, like an updated set of guidelines for racial profiling, and

they were they basically spelled out examples. UM I posted to it on the podcast page for this episode, but they spelled out examples for when that when it's appropriate, and they said if it's an all points bulletin for any police yes, um, if you're traffic or if you're patrolling and looking for criminals and you're basing it on race,

absolutely not allowed. But they said they gave an example where like, um, if for example, you are looking for somebody who carried out a hit on a gang leader, and you know there's this rival gang and this rival gang is probably the ones who carried out this hit, and every member of this rival gang is Hispanic, that you could use that as part of the profile and searching for your suspect. It just makes sense in that case, right, because I don't look for the little old white lady

right exactly because it's that specific. But you wouldn't cast a dragnet over all Hispanics. It would be Hispanic men related to this gang. You see what I'm saying. I think the lesson here is get the little old white lady to do the hit. It's been done before, and you're golden. It has been done before, which is one of the one of the problems with racial profiling is it's distracting. Yeah, you know, we'll get to that. But

that's definitely true. Um. And you know when you watch cops, it's not always like it's sometimes that I will see on the TV show they will pull over. They'll stop a white kid, like suburban white kid that's in a bad neighborhood, because they'll be like, well, he's he didn't belong here. He's probably buying drugs because this is a street where people buy drugs. There's a crackhouse down there. And this guy is from the county. Uh, you know,

the white suburban county out in the suburbs. Let's pull him over. That's racial profile. That's the same same thing but different. Well it's the same thing, yeah, but you know what I mean. Um, all right, so let's talk about probable cause analysis. This is good. There's, um, during a traffic stop, there's there's several things a cop can do, and each one requires different kinds of cause in order for it to be legal. Um. Yeah. Again, they aren't

supposed to just pull you over for no reason. They're not supposed to. You're supposed to fit some sort of either you broke a traffic law or you fit a profile that that has been agreed upon. Is okay. Yeah, But a cop can pull over for and again we're not knocking police officers hard work, and mostly they do

great work. But a cop can pull someone over for anything and say, like when you made that turn, you swung a little too wide, or you hit that yellow line, and um, so I'm suspicious that you're drunk, like you know. Like that, you can almost invent a reason to pull someone over and under any circumstances. So let's just start with that. When you pull over a car, UM, Supposedly, to pull someone over legally, you need to have witnessed

a violation. UM. Or you can run the plates and see if their cars stolen or if there's a warrant out for the owner. That's a big thing you see on cops all the time. Um. And the cop can make a stop as long as they can describe specific factors that fit the profile. Right car, car full of black kids. Not okay to just pull that car over, not for that reason. But if they say, like I

saw um smoke coming out the windows. Um, they were driving erratically and it smelled like pot smoke from the road, then that is a reason number two when you go to a question the suspect. That's moving things up a notch. Uh. You don't have to get a ticket when you get pulled over. You might just get questioned if you seem suspicious. Um, and they can you know, they'll shine that light in the car and they'll look at everything that they can

see without actually searching the car. Yeah, and that well within their right what's called plane view exactly. So if you have like a bag of pots sitting out on the front seat with you and the cops sees it, that just opened your entire car and your person up to a search. Yes, and you that means you are

super high because now now there's probable cause. But if you have long hair and you have an open half gallon of ice cream next to you, still not enough my racist suspicions, But that still should not be enough to give him probable cause to search your car. Well, I got profiled in Texas. Me and my best friend Brett many years ago after college did a big out west trip for two months, and the cops said he didn't put He said he pulled us over because I

didn't have my seat belt on. Um. Why he really pulled us over us because we were too scruffy looking guys with tattoos and beards in a Volkswagen van. Um. And he searched the van. He asked if he could, and we said he could, and he searched the van for like an hour on the side of the road. Long story short, chucked in five years, five hard ones. No, we didn't get taught with anything, and we got away, and he basically was mad at us that he wasted his time and the last thing he said was to

get out of Texas. So and I said, I'm trying to sir. But the point is that that cop asked you if he could search your car, right he did, and that if you give consent then you are waving your Fourth Amendment rights. But you don't have to give consent. Not many people know this, and there's some states that make the cop tell you you are allowed to refuse the search of your car, um, but not all states do.

I've never heard it either, um. Instead, the cop just says, can I search your car in the most intimidating voice possible, and most people will just fold like a house of cards, um, because they're scared of the cop or whatever. Even if they do have something in there, they're not gonna be like, Nope,

you're not allowed to search the car. So the point where the cop asks if he can search the car is usually in the absence of something that nothing in plain sight, but also that cops suspicious suspicions are raised, but he just can't quite prove it. So I'll ask you if you can search your car. If you say no, the cop can say, well, I'm I'm going to detain you temporarily. Right Basically, I can go, I will wait it out, I can get a war it I'm gonna search that car, right, Okay. If he wants to get

a warrant, that's different. Like what he's doing now is trying to do everything he can to search your car without having to go to the trouble of getting a warrant without probable cause, like seeing a bag of pot in the front seat. Right time was that they could detain you for up to like ninety minutes while they called the canine unit out. And the canine unit has been shown to if it the canine unit sniffs around

your car, that's not an unreasonable search. And if the canine smells something or indicates that there are drugs present, then that does provide probable cause for a full search under the Fourth Amendment. Right they change that, yeah, Um. In April this past April, the Supreme Court had decision that said, now you really can't make people wait around

while the drug dog comes out. They're like, we're not a post to that, but the point of a traffic stop is to promote and encourage traffic safety, not to cast a drug drag. That for drug couriers. Um, and you you cannot detain people without a reasonable suspicion to wait for the drug dog to come out. If they tell you can't, they you're not allowed to search their car. That's good. I wonder if it had anything to do

with um. If you look up online, there are ways that cops can make a drug dog signal basically by how they're handling the dog. And there's a lot of suspicion, and they'll play him side by side, like you see this cops doing it, right, And if you see this cop, watch this little thing he does. Then the dog barks. And basically there was a lot of speculation that bad cops would use the dog tail. Well not that, but yeah, essentially making the dog signal a false alert just to

give them reason. Well, the dog barked, So now I can I can search your car or and maybe it all started because I meant to bring this up a second ago. Suspicion can be now they seem nervous, right like, everyone's nervous when a cop pulls him a sure, even if you haven't done anything. It's just nerve wracking. It's like white coat blood pressure. I like a lot of people's blood pressure is high at the doctor because they're

nervous about, you know, being at the doctor. There's someone standing at my window with a gun, right Like, it's nerve wracking. Yeah. So the Supreme Court said, no, you guys, you have to have a reasonable suspicion to detain somebody on the side of the road that they've committed another crime. It can't just be I'm pulling you over. You have to wait for ninety minutes while the drug dog comes out so I can bust you or try to bust you or whatever. That was. That was a big deal

that they came up with that. Yeah, we didn't in Texas. We didn't have the drug dog come out, but we were I felt like we were on the side of the road for an hour while he dug through that entire van. Um just you could tell he was he really wanted to find something. Yeah, all right, let's open the cannib worms, my friend. Racial profiling, it's a big, big deal in this country. It's a problem, and and

um let's talk about it. Okay, that's good. Uh. So that is basically it's a form of predicted profiling, uh where one of, if not the only factor, is skin color. Right that like, um oh, let's say that, um, Mexican people are way more um prone to sell meth. So let's go hang out at that Hispanic neighborhood. Right, But there's a couple of things wrong with that, um, and

that is racial profiling. Some people actually defend it, saying, well, if you look at prison statistics, Hispanics are far more likely to be imprisoned for drug crimes than say, white people, So that makes sense, right, right, Okay, the other saying right right, I'm playing along here. The other side of the coin is that you can use those same statistics to point to the idea that Hispanics and blacks are disproportionately targeted for drug busts than other people, right, and

so the same This is an Ed points out. This is one of the problems with this debate is both sides used the same statistics differently to prove their point. Yeah. Another thing he points out is that people that say some people will say that it is institutionalized racism and its harassment of minority straight up. People who defend against it say, cops harassed criminals, and if those criminals happen to be minorities t s. That's not our fault. And I think that's just the reality of the world we

live in. Even further, there's people who say, yes, racial profiling is the thing, and it's an effective tool of law enforcement. Sorry, welcome to reality. Um. Those people usually

have their arguments demolished pretty quickly, including by professionals. I read this um, this interview, or well an article about the former chief chief of police of Palo Alto around San Francisco area, and um, he also grew up as an Oakland cop, and he was talking about that kind of racial profiling that you were where they would just sit out and like, um, high crime neighborhoods and pull

over anybody white. And they were doing like that for the same reasons, and he was saying it almost never worked. He said that, um, they also would have like long dragnets on stretches of highway and they would target Hispanic people in like low riders, and he said, almost never worked.

And he said that it's ineffective. Right, it's also lazy policing, because he said the better alternative is to forget who who's what color, but just watch for somebody leaning in a car that's just pulled over under the curb, or somebody making furtive moment movements. Right, look for behavior that

is actually linked to crime. Not there's a white person in a black high crime neighborhood, so therefore their there, um they're buying drugs, or even even worse than that, there's a black person who lives in a high crime neighborhood, they must be a drug dealer. Let me go stop and frisk them, um that that is just lazy policing. It's it's shorthand policing. Whereas if you look for actual criminal behaviors you're going to have, you're gonna be far

more successful in busting the bad guys. But even worse than it being like lazy policing and ineffective in a lot of ways. This guy pointed out like, and I've seen this in many different places. If you want to encourage mistrust and animosity toward the police, scoop up every member in the community and take him to jail just on the off chance that you might find something that sticks. If you want to set a town off or any population off, do that for a few years and see

what happens. And that's what we've been seeing time and time again. It's systematic. Yes, it's systematic targeting and then a systematic reactions. Uh. And I've mentioned cops a lot. If you're out there saying, well, yeah, but on cops every time they pull over that's a shady black guy in the neighborhood he has something on him and gets arrested. Or that white kid in the bad neighborhood he's there to buy drugs, it's a TV show that's edited. Right.

They don't show you the twenty five stops where there is no crime because it would not be a fun TV show exactly, all right. So I think people use that as like dummies use that as proof sometimes, like watch Cops Man every single time, right, Like yeah, exactly right, Like all all matthe Users are scrawny and white. So if you see a scrawny white guy, Matthewuser, that's right.

Or marathon runner, right, you know. Uh So obviously there can be uh rogue cops, racist cops that are doing their thing on a on a singular level or with their partner. But it becomes a real real problem. That's a problem. It becomes a super real problem when it

is part of the system. Uh. In which was the case with the New Jersey State Troopers in the late nineties, they did a ten year study and found out that eighty percent of all traffic stops were minorities over a ten year period, and they found that there was a quote macho elitist culture within the state trooper ranks end

quote and um. Basically, even though they officially said racial profiling isn't right, there was a system in place where veterans would really coach and teach the younger cops, like this is how we're doing it, and they were basically outed. Um. The authorities assigned federal monitors to those troopers, and evidently by two thousand six they had um a report suggested they had eliminated that profiling completely. Yeah, which is good if that's the case. You know, and I'm sure it is.

New Jersey state troopers are intimidating. You ever seen those guys. They're the ones that look like the military uniforms, which is a whole other issue altogether. Well, I mean not like M sixty, like like the dress, blues, boots and all that. Um. It turns out twenty two states have lawns that band racial profiling of motorists, which is great until you think that that also means that states don't. It's kind of weird if you ask me. Um and uh.

I found a study also from Illinois that found that in Illinois, black and Hispanic drivers were two times likelier to be stopped and searched, but white drivers were two times likelier to have contraband on them. Weird, not only weird, it's it's startling. How like it's it's not effective like there, it's not leading to stopping crime, yeah, which is sort

of the point. Well. And then another very controversial a bout of racial prof aisling that this country went through came after September eleven, of course, and in the aftermath of that, you would remember every every month or two you'd hear about someone who sometimes seeks who aren't even Arab, would get kicked off of like a plane or something like that because they made the pilot nervous just being there. Yeah, or T s A would would like pat down. Um.

Just proportionately more Arab people than white people. Um. And now supposedly they based it on your behavior rather than your race, so they're not rachel profiling any longer, supposedly, and it is. I have to say, I haven't heard of one of those cases in a while, but it seemed like for a while we're hearing about it all the time. Yeah, I think there was a heightened sense

of everything back then. Of course, right after. But so this guy who used to manage the Ben Gurion Airport in Um Israel, Rafael Ron, he pointed out that that was the exact opposite of what you want to do yeah, he said, the worst tech in the history of this airport was carried out by Japanese in the early seventies. And he said, if we're focusing on an ethnic group, then we're we're potentially missing someone that's about to do something bad, right, which is exactly what happened in nine

two at that airport. Three members of the Japanese Red Army walked in with machine guns and violin cases and just opened them up and started opening fire on the crowd and killed I think, um twenty six people. And they were hired by the PLO. Pl O knew that they could never walk into the the Israeli airport, but the Japanese people would unnoticed. And so this guy is saying the same thing like if you're really on the lookout for your enemy, like again, watch for behavior, like

do actual police work. Don't just use this lazy shorthand stuff, because it's gonna it's going to take off this entire population and it's gonna cause in you to miss the real crime. Well, yeah, you've got like it sounds like a movie. Them the cops are at the airport and they detained this, uh, this air of guy who's like late for a business meeting. And then in the in the same shot, the white dude who was a Timothy McVey, just walks right behind them with the with the bomb

on his body. You realize you just described the subplot to Airplane Too, did Yeah, remember Sonny Bono had the bomb. It's a little mild mannered, weasily dude. Yeah, that's right. And I think he walks through while they're jacking up some like I think plo dudes. Maybe that was subconscious. Wow, so that's a profiling tip of the iceberg. I would call that. Oh, sure, there's we could do a series

of shows on this, I'm sure. Uh. And if you want to know more about profiling in the meantime, uh, type that word into the search bar of your favorite search engine and I'm sure we'll bring up all manner of terrible stuff. You can also type in the search bart how stuff works dot com and it will bring up this article by the Crabs or And since I said grabs or time for a listener mail, I'm gonna call this wee f us, which is short for water enema from a water slide or from a slide. And

this is from Tiffany last name withheld, She says. Uh. As a kid, I remember being a chubby eleven year old girl excited for her first trip to Disney World in the water park then known as Typhoon Lagoon, had a brand new neon green with black polka up bathing suit. It was all excited and UH to go down the Cowabunga, a two fourteen foot tall water slide on a steep sixty degree angle. They tell you to keep your ankles crossed.

But as a little chubby eleven year old girl, my brain comprehended, but my little legs did not have the strength for all two d and fourteen feet. Thank you see where this is headed. After plumbing the bottom, immediately knew something was not right. I clenched my thighs as tightly as I could, pulling out the massive water slide wedgie. Not two steps from exiting the slide, though, a different type of waterfall began to trick al down my legs. No matter how tightly I clinched, I couldn't stop it.

I waddled up to a gorgeous Australian teenager employee and explain, I need a restroom right away. Uh, with a smug smile. He pointed all the way to the other side of the lagoon, which was a long walk. Just as I entered the bathroom with all the force of the water that had entered my body, it exited, and I single handedly shut down a small portion of Disney that day. As embarrassing as this was, I was more upset than

my new bathing suit was ruined. My parents were furious because they had to show out fifty dollars for a new one Toronto. I hope I didn't gross you out too bad. I think of it as a cautionary lesson for your listeners. Thanks for all your hard work. Um, I hope to see you guys sometime in Detroit. And hey October, Tiffany last name with eld. We're just gonna call you Tiffany poopy pants. We're coming to Detroit in October, yes, ostensibly ostensibly, and also we want to stay Detroit in

advance of us coming. We're sorry for all the jokes we made about you. It'll all come home to roost. See you in October. If you want to tell us a gross story that happened when you were a kid, like, yeah, don't just tell us something else and tweet to us at s y s K podcast, join us on Facebook dot com, slash stuff you Should Know, send us an email to Stuff Podcast at how stuff Works dot com, and join us out at home on the web Stuff

you Should Know dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, is that how stuff Works dot com.