Profiling

[sweatnbullets]

We had a great thread on Preassault Behavioral Patterns and brownie made a great point on "suspicious" people.

I think we are of the class of people (respectful) that can discuss profiling without getting into racial overtones.

I would like to hear if you profile or not?

What is it that you look for?

How much of this is just based on past experience, or just a gut feeling?

[Guantes]

Always!
Age
Dress
Demeanor
Group size
Race (If out of place)
Experience, gut feeling and the hair on the back of my neck.

[DocH]

Just as with the "Preassault Behavioral Patterns", if you know what to look for,you are indeed profiling,and I see nothing wrong with that.
I know that I am constantly profiling and I think my years of experience in police work has certainly contributed to my ability to be correct most of the time.
I don't,nor have I ever,considered profiling as a racial issue. To me it's just an aquired ability over time,to recognize a certain type of individual and to know when they're up to something.
I can walk into a store and spot what I think is a shoplifter in an instant.
If I choose to watch them long enough they usually always conceal some type of merchandise. Of course,I worked in that field for about 6 years,and they always immediately give off tell tale signals the moment they walk in the door.
Same situation with looking for drug transporters along the interstate.The type of vehicle,is it a rental,certain state tags,CB radio,etc.
I learned a lot about this when I was regularly assisting one of the State Troopers in another county I worked in as a deputy sheriff .
I know there's been a lot of controversy about profiling in law enforcement
and I don't know why people insist that it's a racial issue.
For example,I would venture to say that 98% of all the drug runners we popped were white males.
It's also an established fact that most shoplifting offenders are white females.Profiling is simply a tool.I'm a people watcher and I think I'm pretty good at recognizing certain types,due I think to training over time and the fact that I have been dealing with the public almost all of my adult life.

[Desert Rat]

For me the concept of profiling focuses not on race, but on body language, how a person it dressed, and other visual cues. I personally deal with people as individuals, and could care less what color their skin is or where they hail from. Everybody gets treated with respect, unless they prove they don't deserve it.

Body language is probably the most critical for me. For example, you could take some guy and have him walk two different ways towards me on the street, and just the way he's walking would determine how I would react to him. If he was just mosying along like everyone else, bothering nobody and maybe smiling or saying hi as he passed me, I would probably just smile back and say hi as well. I wouldn't class him as anything but a normal guy. Not that I would let my guard down, but I would just stay in Condition Yellow.

But take that same guy and have him walk towards me doing that damn stupid half skipping wannabe gangsta walk, with his body language all expansive and aggressive, put him in some obnoxious, stupid looking clothes with some bling and his hat on sideways, and I would immediately classify him as a potential threat, and change my body language to a Don't Even Think About Messing With Me mode.

I don't see anything wrong with profiling, because that's what people do. Every day of your life you discriminate and pass judgement on people, and put everyone in a class of some type because it makes making choices simpler and more efficient. Coke or Pepsi. Ford or Chevy. Spyderco or Benchmade. Every time you make a choice, you profile and discriminate. It the human way.

[Roundeyesamurai]

Profiling- Well, this is a topic I can speak about with some authority, being that I did it for a living and continue to do it per diem nowadays.

Profiling is a skill that most people (including most people who believe they are engaging in it) do inherently, but do badly. This is generally because they use irrelevant criteria to construct profiles- with the result being that their "profile" is more like fodder for gossip.

Profiling criteria need to be both relevant and, more importantly, quantifiable. Profiling tiself does no good unless you can actually state, clearly and comprehensibly, how the profile is relevant. "A bad feeling" is nowhere near as quantifiable as "Subject is behaving in a manner consistent with being under the effects of (insert controlled substances), such as (name effects), and is displaying characteristics indicative of a hostile or combative intent, such as (name characteristics)".

A good, and readily understandable, example of the clarification of profiling criteria, is a field sobriety test. It's simple enough to look at someone and tell they are impaired; however, "Yup, he's drunk" is not sufficient grounds for action. Being able to describe relevant characteristics of intoxication, in a manner which clearly illustrates their relevance, is valuable.

Of course, profiling is only as good as the experience level of those who do it. When no such training existed, the responsibility for identifying characteristics and describing them rested solely on the individual.

Luckily, profiling training has progressed substantially in the last decade or so, and has had two significant effects:

1) Those who are trained well, are better able to quantify what they are seeing and why it is relevant;

2) Those who are trained well, are less likely to rely on irrelevant or inflammatory criteria (such as race, when not appropriate).

Of course, the holy grail of profiling is behavioral profiling, which is a topic which would take me years to cover. :)

[Brownie]

As a civilian, I'm with the answers Guantes and Desert Rat give in their replies.

I'm not looking to quantify the "why" of what sets the bells off, nor will I likely have to articulate in a report or to a jury what set the bells off. Just that the bells have gone off [ the hair on the back of my neck, or the increased heart rate I feel ] is enough for me.

If the bells ring, the hair is standing on the back of the neck, the heart rate is up due to increased focus and anticipation of potential anything other than having a nice day feeling, thats all I need to keep my old butt from being taken by surprise.

And the older my butt gets, the more I need to have lead time by profiling.

[DocH]

Roundeye,that's an extremely well articulated reply.Wish I could explain it that well. Man,you should consider a second career in journalism.

[Roundeyesamurai]

LOL Thanks, Doc!

I would do that, except I hate journalists :D

[JMusic]

When I was attending college majoring in Forensics we had a certain number of active LEO's that were working toward a degree. In my younger days (Early 70's) we had some unique instructors. Our criminology course was taught by an obvious anti LE individual that I will profile as a hippi. He was very unfair. ONe day we were in a discussion of why "Hippi's" (instructors term) are unfairly stopped. After several answers by LEO's our instructor was still not convinced. A Sergent from a local Pd stood up and stated " Mr. Jarred it's pretty simple for me there are two types of human beings,"People and Assholes" as long as you can determin the difference you will do well. That shut him up and we all had a good chuckle. I have to admitt though I still practice that thought process today. Racial profiling must be used if your call is white male 6 foot tall slim build. Why would you stop a black male that met this criteria?? Common sense. To pull over a black man becuase he is black is wrong. To shake down a man with a turban is wrong, IF YOU HAVE NO PROBABLE CAUSE. PROBABLY CAUSE is the deciding factor that has to be used. If you use that there is no racial profiling.
Jim

[sweatnbullets]

As you guys know, I have never been a cop, but that does not mean that I do not know the streets. I grew up in a tough section of Los Angeles and basically ignored "The Three Stupid Rule" for over thirteen years. Hell, I lived with stupid people, that went stupid places, and did stupid things. When you live in an environment like that, you do not even know that there is another way to live.

While on the streets I picked up a real knack for profiling. I can spot trouble a mile away. Guantes and Desert Rat laid it down pretty well, but there is even more. I have found that there is even a certain look about someone and it is usually in their eyes. The eyes are the window to the soul and you can tell a lot by what you see in them. I am rarely wrong when I see that look in their eyes.

The smile is also a dead give away. I can spot a fake smile nearly 100% of the time. Deceit and deception is the game on the streets, once you learn to spot it, you are a tough nut to crack.

[JMusic]

I think it goes a little further than that with body langues and what I describe as pack mentality but you are damn close. Bottom line trust your instuncts. They are Subliminal indicatons that are giving warnings.
Jim

[Brownie]

JM,

I like the term subliminal, I like it a lot. Good post.