Racial Profiling 101
I get a call yesterday from a friend, his son, a Muslim, was sitting outside of school with his backpack on the curb waiting for his father to pick him up from school. Next to him was a boy his same age, also with his backpack, he happened to be white. The security guard comes up to the Muslim, and asks him what he is doing there. The kid says he’s a student and is waiting to be picked up. The guard proceeds to ask to see his ID–the guard checks it out and leaves. He does not say a word to the white student.
The father is furious. I’m left with the thought that while this might be innocent and innocuous, it would seem that in this day and age with the issue of racial profiling burning in our community that a security guard would be a bit more sensitive to the social context of his interaction and take care to make sure that his actions do not spark allegations of racial profiling. It can’t be that hard, can it? The son is embarrased and humiliated at something where he did not do a single thing incorrectly, other than to sit on a curb and be a Muslim-American in Davis. When is this community going to start to question our practices?
Cleaning up the DA’s office
Interesting gossip coming out of the DA’s office. When Jeff Reisig ran to replace the long-time DA Dave Henderson, he was supported by nearly everyone in the DA’s office as well as most of the law enforcement community. Despite that heavy support from the establishment Reisig won a relatively narrow race with just 54 percent of the vote.
For a long time, there have been complaints about the operations within the department. Most of us assumed that Reisig would continue business as usual within the office given the people who supported his candidacy. However, it seems that the specter of a future challenge may be convincing Reisig he had better clean up the office while he can. He has pulled the files on all of the employees and will review them. This move has apparently caused quite a stir already. We’ll see if this is just a ploy or whether Reisig is prepared to clean house (an act that is long overdue from what we’ve heard).
—Doug Paul Davis reporting
