Profiling Murder

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‘My best friend was murdered in cold blood,’ begins an e-mail sent Monday to the Homicide Report. ‘I know the public is quick to assume it was gang-related, but my friend was not a gang member. He never did nothing evil in his life. He was always at home or at work...I just want the public to know that on saturday morning in south Los Angeles I lost not only a friend but a brother.’

The case in question is second on this week’s list, that of Enrique Ramos, who was killed for no other reason but that he happened to be a young Latino man in a risky neighborhood. The suspect may be a teenager. ‘It appeared he could barely hold the assault rifle up,’ said Sheriff’s Lt. Dan Rosenberg. There is more than one such random killing on this week’s list, reflecting a common homicide circumstance: Young men killed not because they are gang members, but because they looked like they could be. Just being minority males in neighborhoods where gangs are active is enough to make them targets.

The word ‘profiling’ is used in reference to police scrutiny of minority men, but the same term might be applied to such gang killings. They are, in essence, profiling murders, where suspects make assumptions based on gender and skin color -- and nothing else.