Profiling
Reader comment on item: To Profile or Not to Profile?

Submitted by Michael Burkert (United States), Sep 22, 2004 at 02:26

I was a U.S. Customs Inspector for 17 years. During the years that I worked at Miami International Airport, we were taught, and were expected to master profiling. It worked! We caught more drug smugglers, both mules (carriers) or internal (alimentary canal) smugglers because we KNEW WHAT TO LOOK FOR in an arriving passenger. Such things as a young single woman arriving from a certain South American country, with a cash paid ticket, and no apparent reason for having traveled to that country! Search her luggage and BINGO...Cocaine. Or a man with dirty hands, a cheap suit and shoes, but a VERY EXPENSIVE suitcase arriving from that same South American country. Search his suticase and BINGO...Cocaine. I was never taught to look extra carefully at minorities because we caught just as many White Anglo smugglers as we did Latins or Blacks.

Although "profiling" is now akin to using a swear word, it realy works well. We must protect ourselves anyway we have to. It's ludicrous to search a 70-year old granny lady, and let others pass because we wouldn't want to "offend someone now," would we? Amnesty International's reasoning is that we should just let /em pass, so they can perpetrate more harm and damage to our nation. DO WHAT HAS TO BE DONE.

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