Racial Profiling of Dearborn Case and Undermining of Community Policing

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Policing and Prosecution
Racial Profiling of Dearborn Case and Undermining of Community Policing
After the 9/11 terror attack, the United States government suggested that the local policing and the federal agents needed to conduct voluntary questioning within the Dearborn, a region highly concentrated with Arabs. It was due to the association of the Arabs with the Al-Qaeda groups. However, the local police resisted the idea claiming that it was suitable for the federal officers to conduct the interviews themselves (Thacher 655). The questioning of the Dearborn Arabs, specifically those with the temporary United States visas, constituted racial profiling because the interviews targeted the Arabs alone, indicating that the federal government had already suspected the Arabs to be part of the Al-Qaeda group.
The Dearborn region was occupied by the Arabs ethnic group, indicating that the Arabs were the target group for questioning. In recent years, the Arab community has recorded a rocky history with community policing based on ethnicity and racism issues (Thacher 648). The Arab population in the Dearborn had grown when the region experienced high incidences of police brutality and racial intolerance. During the 1940s to 1980s, the Arabs had experienced harassment from the police, specifically during the reign of Hubbard. The police were believed to be spying on Arabs, which damaged their reputation with the Arab community. Since the relationship between the local policing and the Arabs in the Dearborn had been destroyed, the questioning was likely associated with racial profiling.
Moreover, the police officers within the Dearborn region were pressured by the Arabs to provide enough security to the residents as capricious Arabs had been killed. There were also incidents of students' torture by the police which resulted in demonstrations. Since the local policing did not take the Arabs' issues and allegations seriously, investigations and questioning would prove significant racism against the Arabs society (Thacher 648). Thus, the suspicion the Arab community in the Dearborn region had over the police was likely to contribute to racial profiling during the questioning process.
Further, many Arabs' names such as "Hussein or Mohammed" is familiar. They would result in the police and federal agents suspecting innocent Arabs within the Dearborn region to be part of the Al-Qaeda group. Therefore, there would be increased chances of promoting mistaken identity, which would be difficult to settle (Thacher 657). The questioning also would result in excessive pressure where an interviewee would be pressed to offer information they do not have. Therefore, the questioning of the Arabs in Dearborn entirely constituted racial profiling.
The process of engaging the police in questioning ruins their principles regarding community policing. Police officers are expected to promote security by establishing a strong reputation with society. Engaging the police officers to question the Arabs in the Dearborn region would result in conflicts between the police and the Arabs. Since the police officers had a rocky relationship with the local policing, the questioning process would catalyze the enmity bet...