Profiling in America

Now on the trip out, my travel partner, told me he was stopped for speeding in Battle Mountain Nevada. Upon finishing writing the ticket the cop suggested he smelled Marijuana in the car. Given that about the worse thing the driver of the car has ever done in life if eat ice cream with a liquor flambéed banana toping, this was somewhat laughable. However the cop persisted, and was offered the opportunity to search the vehicle, at which time he backed down. I suggested to the accused drug addict, it was probably his scruffy goatee when he told me about the incident.

Now, this wouldn't make it into a blog entry, were it not for Simon L. Lies Hamilton County Ohio Sheriff, who decided have one of his deputies hang out on Interstate 71 just outside of Cincinnati. We drove by the deputy doing exactly the speed limit. A few miles down the road we noticed we were being tailgated by said deputy. He followed us for another two miles, before finally flipping his light bar on. We pulled over. Then one of the strangest conversations I’ve ever been involved in with a cop ensued. Our deputy wanted to know where we had just come from. We said Columbus. He wanted to know where we were going. We said St. Louis via Louisville. –Not the most direct route. He then asked why we flew into Columbus. We said we had not, and had come from New York. He got a bit of terse look on his face. “You flew into Columbus?” he said.
We tried to explain our route. He cut us off as asked to see our identification. We complied and he went back to his car.

“Something is up.” I said.
The deputy returned after a few minutes, asked if we could get out of the car to explain a few things. Turns out he’s from the regional narcotics interdiction force. Anytime they see a large out of state vehicle (which apparently a Toyota 4Runner is. Well in Cincinnati.) They pull it over for a routine narcotics search. He was looking for large quantities of Methamphetamine or Cocaine. Not single use. Would we mind if he searched the car. We laughed and said sure. I was a little less amused as I have supplied liquors for the flambé eying of bananas over ice cream before. I had more to hide. Anyway the deputy poked around in our suitcases, ice chest etc. and found: nothing.
He gave us our ID’s back, apologized, explained his job again, and got back in his car.

So I guess we were profiled. One, out of state car, going someplace with two guys (one wearing a scraggy goatee) and you have drug traffic suspects. You pull them over, interrogate and see if they break. We were cooperative. We got to go free. Plus I shaved of my goatee last summer, which I think kept us out of jail.

I guess what lingers in my mind as disturbing about this program is the asking to search a vehicle of people who are basically law biding and are just on vacation in another state. Looking at SUVs as suspect in America is a bit like looking for who pissed in the public pool last. When asked for a search, we certainly complied. We didn’t have anything to hide. But somehow back in my mind I got the impression refusing the search was going to cause me a lot more hassle that it would be worth in lost time. But somewhere I can’t help but think this program skirts the 4th amendment to the constitution. Where was the probably cause to assume a Toyota 4Runner with two guys was transporting a large amounts of narcotics? If driving a SUV with out of state plates is the only reason the Hamilton County Sheriffs department needs to pull vehicles over and search them, they’ll need to hire a lot of deputies for the summer vacation season. Everyone heads for the pools. Few of us are snorting crank.

I did mail a letter to the Sheriff inquiring how effective his program was. So far it has netted a banana flambéer and an accessory the flambé eying. Guilty as suspected.