Antiterrorist Policing in New York City after 9/11: Comparing Perspectives on a Complex Process

Human Organization, Spring 2005 by Bornstein, Avram

One officer explained that before 9/11, he did not look at Arabs or Muslims as suspicious, but now he does. Even when confronted with the idea that it is prejudice, he said he had to pay attention to his suspicions: "A cop's got to go with his gut, sometimes." Before 9/11, the debate was if there was or was not systematic racial profiling by police of black people. Everyone agreed that it was wrong, but they did not agree that it occurred. After 9/11, the debate became should there be or not be profiling of Arabs and Muslims.

Several students and workers have said they were stopped, but few want to go on record. An exception was a 20-year-old CUNY student who was taking pictures of storefronts on Main Street in Flushing Queens in New York City to document changing neighborhoods for an urban sociology course in February 2003. Three officers became suspicious, began a field interrogation and learned he was a Pakistani named Yasser Hussain (Geron 2003). He was taken into custody in the 109th precinct where the Criminal Intelligence Section of the NYPD questioned and released him about five hours later. Before 9/11 the NYPD formally issued policy statements prohibiting officers from field investigations based only on a person's ethnic or racial identity and that such identity can only be gathered as pedigree information. Race alone cannot justify a stop, but race in addition to a second factor is acceptable. So Hussain's nationality in combination with his suspicious picture taking made the two necessary factors. Other suspicious behaviors mentioned by police were carrying boxes or packages, being overdressed in warm weather, or just standing around.

Like young black men, immigrants might not feel they are in a position to refuse a field interrogation or a consent search. Patrol officers overwhelmingly understand that they are expected to be courteous, professional, and respectful in their engagement with the public, but like the AfricanAmerican community, frequent stops and searches are likely to be experienced as harassment. Understanding its dangers, Commissioner Kelly has warned against racial profiling saying that "profiling generally, irrespective of whether or not it's the moral thing to do or the right thing to do, ...can really dissipate your resources. It takes away a lot of energy...Profiling, in many ways, is a result of lack of information. So we need more information about activities, about people coming into this country" (Interview on CNBC, December 13,2002). Profiling may not only be immoral and a waste of resources, it may also be counterproductive. As Kelly indicates, information is key and this requires cooperation with the community, especially to provide intelligence. If the community feels the police are hostile to them, they are less likely to cooperate, their bilingual children are less likely to join the Department, and those who do are likely to endure criticism.

The psycho-cultural paradigm examines the emotional and shared meanings of specific activities or behaviors of police. From this perspective, the consequences of trauma like reactive aggression and remorse, and the mythologies of Hollywood become salient in policing. Behavior stemming from these motivations may or may not coincide with the instrumental logics described by the security-civil liberties debate.