RACIAL PROFILING AS EFFECTIVE POLICE WORK

This story goes right along with my posting of "Racial Profiling By Police Not Altogether Bad" (8-1-09).

[For the uninitiated, the word "collar" is East Cost cop slang for an arrest.]

I WAS A RACIAL PROFILER: EX-COP SAYS HE USED SKIN COLOR TO MAKE ARRESTS
By Jake Mcnicholas

New York Daily News
August 2, 2009

I'm retired now after a wonderful career with the New York City Police Department, and I have a confession to make.

I used a person's race to initiate investigations and make subsequent arrests. In fact, according to the definition bandied about by those on the left who have no idea what they are talking about nor a clue when it comes to police work, I was - yes - a racial profiler.

A little background. I was a detective, a third generation member of the greatest police department in the world, descendant of my grandfather who sailed from the west of Ireland and then served as a cop for 35 years. My dad, the man I most admire, is a retired first grade detective who put in 33.

In November 1992 I was transferred to Manhattan North Narcotics. We covered the precincts north of 59th St. but rarely did enforcement south of 96th St.

I never had a better time in my life than my early years in Manhattan North. I worked with the greatest guys in the world and had more laughs than you could imagine. I went to war with these guys and gals, white, black, Hispanic.

Put it this way. When you were up there during this time, you didn't want to take off or go on vacation and miss something. There was nothing worse than coming back to work and have some guy say, "Wow, you should have been here yesterday."

I spent a lot of time in Washington Heights during those years, working narcotics in the confines of the 30th Precinct. It was a busy place with loads of illegal drug activity - dealing on the street and in residential buildings outfitted and barricaded as drug spots. We made arrests, thousands of arrests, and here is one of the ways the white cops and Hispanic cops and black cops did it.

We looked for white people.

That's all you really had to do. Cruise Broadway or Amsterdam Ave. or Riverside Drive in an unmarked car, spot the white guy driving the vehicle with the Jersey plate slow and deliberate, watch him park and shuffle to the sale location, watch him walk back to the vehicle with the pep in his step shortly thereafter and bingo. Most times you had a collar.

That's what you were paying us for, wasn't it? The good people of Washington Heights have a right to live in a neighborhood free of cretins driving over the George Washington Bridge to Manhattan for the sole purpose of buying drugs, don't they?

Is that not good police work? Of course it is.

So please, ponder this for a moment. Who do you think is terrorizing the black community? Who do you think is raping and assaulting young black women? Who do you think is pulling out the nine and shooting young male blacks on the corner over a bag of Cheez Doodles and a Philly blunt?

Pause and ask yourself why do you think more blacks and Hispanics are stopped? Because, you guessed it, they are the ones committing the crimes and fitting the description. The Police Department is not making this up. This is the horrible truth. The carnage is appalling, and rather than address the real issue, liberals and civil rights leaders make excuses and ignore the facts.

Now the left is all worked up over a cop responding to a 911 call of a burglary in progress and the resulting collar. Henry Louis Gates Jr. is a Harvard professor. How about this novel approach, "Certainly, here's my ID and thanks for the quick response Sergeant."?

But here is the most profoundly sad part about it all. Even after Thursday's "beer summit," this will be an issue for months, a ridiculous issue. And all the while the body count from black-on-black crime will continue to rise.
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McNicholas served with the NYPD from 1985 to 2007, retiring as a first grade detective from the terrorist interdiction unit of the Intelligence Division.