"Do we need this" was what one Bush administration apparatchik wrote on a report showing that racial profiling is alive and well in American law enforcement, according to this New York Times article. That comment was part of an attempt to first censor a report to Congress. When its writer, Lawrence A. Greenfeld, turned out to have integrity, the Department of Justice tried to bury the report in cyberspace.

Greenfeld, by the way, was forced out of his job as head of the Bureau of Justice Statistics, even though he had only six more months to retirement. For some reason Bush and Company are having trouble finding a replacement.

Here is a link to the report itself. Do note that before the report begins, someone at Justice has inserted highly misleading highlights of its findings.

This is deeply disappointing. One of the few decent things that Bush’s administration had convinced me of is that they were not bigoted racially. But burying this report is a pretty clear indication that they would far rather have bigoted law enforcement than not.

And if that is not bigotry in government, what is?

Oscar Chamberlain - 8/29/2005

Thank you for beginning to take a closer look at the report, which is what it deserves. The point you bring up is a good one, and its meaning hinges on many things, including the degree to which greater police initiated stops were justified.

Whatever the best interpretation the of data, we are still left with the question of why it was buried, and the only answer I can imagine is the NY Times answer, which is that the Bush Administration does not want to deal with the problem.

John H. Lederer - 8/28/2005

The report notes that police contacts with Blacks and Hispanics were more likely to be police initiated ( as opposed to the civilian contacting the police), and that force and searches were more likely to occur when the contact was police initiated.

Mentioning searches and force without the higher rate of police initiated contact would seem misleading to me.