This week I made my debut at In Justice Today, a blog founded by the Fair Punishment Project at Harvard Law School. My first post warns reformers not to focus solely on individual racist officers because color-blind policies can also have terrible impacts on communities of color:
While it is entirely fair to say that more crime justifies a greater police presence in a segment of a city, that crime does not — or, rather, should not obviate the constitutional rights of the people who live in that area. If statistics showed there were more child pornography producers and distributors in white neighborhoods, the police would not be justified going door to door to intimidate presumptively innocent residents to get consent to search their computers to combat child pornography. Residents would be outraged to be treated as criminal suspects and intimidated to surrender their rights. Yet the GRU eviscerates Fourth Amendment protections for young black men walking down the street as policy, irrespective of any racial prejudice by the officers.
If a policy is damaging a community, the good intent in the officers’ heart is functionally irrelevant.
You can read the whole post here.