A fight has broken out in New York City between police unions and the city council, which is now seeking a bill that would ban racial profiling, including profiling by “color, age, citizenship status, gender, sexual orientation, or housing status.” The police union has now run an ad asking, “How Effective Is A Police Officer With a Blindfold On?” The ad states:
The New York City Council wants to pass a law that bans police officers from identifying a person by age, gender, color or disability. If a police officer transmits descriptions beyond clothing color they can be sued for racial profiling. That’s dangerous for the public and police officers.
The union notes that racial profiling is already illegal. But, says PBA President Patrick Lynch, “What this does is handcuff the police officer on the street. When a description comes over, rather than saying, ‘a male white wearing jeans and a tee-shirt,’ now it comes over ‘jeans and a tee-shirt.” Opponents say that the bill will generate tens of thousands of lawsuits.
Councilman Brad Lander (D-Brooklyn), however, claims that the bill is necessary to stop civil rights infringements. “Police officers will continue to be able to use skin color and gender and age and height in suspect descriptions,” said Lander. “What doesn’t work is profiling people based solely on their being one race, being one religion, being gay, living in public housing.”
Ben Shapiro is Editor-At-Large of Breitbart News and author of the New York Times bestseller “Bullies: How the Left’s Culture of Fear and Intimidation Silences America” (Threshold Editions, January 8, 2013).
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