Can Police Paperwork Prevent Profiling?

Re “Paper Trail Begins on Racial Profiling,” Nov. 12: I can already see some of the ramifications of the LAPD collecting reports on racial profiling. Soon enough, law enforcement will probably be stopping more fair-skinned motorists to prove that they don’t practice profiling. And this to me amounts to nothing more than reverse discrimination.

If police officers’ hands are tied against stopping the “unfairly targeted” blacks and Latinos, then what other group is left to prove its point? I think this whole idea is just another example of civil rights advocates crying “poor me.”

Gregg Shives

Alhambra

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Now police officers are going to be required to fill out about a dozen questions on race, gender, age, reason stopped, etc., all this in an effort to prove racial profiling; i.e., to find out if police are targeting minorities.

Problems are sure to come up: What if an officer (regardless of his or her race) works in an area predominately Hispanic or black; if the officer tickets 90% minorities in such an area, is he or she guilty of discrimination? What if it was reversed and the area consisted of mostly white citizens and the officer ticketed mostly whites--is that discrimination? Nah, there can’t be discrimination against whites, can there?

This is a waste of time and money. The police are doing a good job during difficult times as they handle traffic violators all the way up to murderers.

Larry Bickmann

Thousand Oaks