The Cato Institute's Radley Balko mentioned the case of alleged racial profiling in Palestine, TX by a Byrne-grant funded drug task force in a recent op ed in a Eureka, CA newspaper. Grits first broke the story that all 72 Palestine defendants are black. See Balko's regular commentary at The Agitator.
All races use drugs about the same rate, and studies show most people buy drugs from people of the same race. So if this agency is targeting 100% blacks when the county is only 20% black, they're ignoring 80% of the drug problem.
ReplyDeleteSee this item from Drug War Rant for a statistical analysis of the likelihood that 72 crack dealers live in tiny Palestine, Texas. If that were true, he says, every crackhead in the county would have their own personal "crack assistant" as a dealer.
See the Texas Observer story on this and links to all of Grits coverage on the Palestine case here.