Bear: Profiling Hispanics and Poverty

Hello Little Bear,

I wasn't going to write about it, and it happened about 3 days ago, but you may be interested someday. We were coming back from an appointment and almost home when I noticed a couple of police cars passing us, and then we saw 3 state patrol cars behind one small sedan. They were searching the trunk. A group of what appeared to be Mexican orchard workers were walking away from the car. I kept going but then something told me to turn around. I wondered if the Hispanics were being profiled. I have only once before involved myself in someone else's police matter--the other time it was when I noticed an officer handling a woman roughly, who appeared to be homeless and drunk. Even if these Hispanics were being profiled, it's none of my business right? I don't know...

So I turned around, and drove right up to the workers who were walking away, who were by that time in a parking lot. They didn't know any English at all. All were shorter of stature, fairly dark-skinned, and one or two had bandanas around their heads. My Spanish is limited. I asked them, "Tu necessite un person quien hablan espanol, por translation y explicar este?" They said yes and nodded their heads and started speaking rapidly and I didn't understand. I gathered they had been pulled over because the driver was speeding. The driver was in the back seat of a patrol car. An officer came over to me, and I said, "Do any of you officers speak Spanish?" He said no. I said, "These people would like to speak to an interpreter; they don't know what's going on." Then I added, "How can you read someone their rights before making an arrest if you're not speaking their language?" He then said, pointing to the group, "THEY'RE free to leave. You're free to leave too." He said "free to leave" but waved his arm and the tone was somewhat forceful, as if he was telling me to leave, not letting me know I was free to leave. I said, "Okay, I understand. I also know I'm free to stay, because this is a public parkinglot." I told him I wasn't leaving until they had an officer on the scene who could speak Spanish. The Spanish group kept trying to tell me they had "una licencia" at home, in Wenatchee. I gave them my name and phone number, telling them when the guy got an "advocateur" (probably mixing my French and Spanish but they understood) to have the lawyer call me if he needed a witness. They asked for my name and number on another piece of paper for the guy in the car. I gave it to them.

While I was talking to this group, the officers continued to search but looked a little bit worried.

I left before someone arrived on the scene who spoke Spanish, because you were in the car with me. But as I pulled out of the parkinglot, another state patrol guy, the fourth one, who was white, was coming up. I thought perhaps that guy would be bilingual.

I didn't really know if I had done the right thing or not, but it felt right. Maybe the guy in the back had been under investigation for some time, and they really had something on him. But then again, maybe it was just a car full of poor-looking Hispanics who were at a disadvantage because of their skin color and language barrier. Even if they were carrying drugs in the trunk or something, they had rights too.

Later I called a lawyer's office in town, for Paul Cassell. I had heard he was one of the better lawyers in Wenatchee and just wanted to know if his offices could answer a question I had. I called their receptionist and told her what had happened and asked, "Don't they have to read someone their rights first? and if they can't understand what is said, how does that work?" She said she thought they'd take the person to jail and that there they'd have an interpreter. I said, "But I thought someone had to have their rights read to them before they were arrested, and this guy was arrested AND his car was being searched..." She said she didn't know.

I still don't know for sure. But it's an interesting matter. I can understand the importance of having people know and learn English, to avoid problems like these. But law enforcement and any other group that affects the rights of others should have interpreters on hand. I read, for example, that many children who have been taken from their families by CPS in Wenatchee, had parents who only spoke Spanish and in many cases, did not have a translator provided to them to explain the process and how to comply with court orders. A Hispanic woman who was working for CPS filed and won a discrimination lawsuit against CPS. She had made note of situations like these, and the comments that employees made about Hispanics and Native Americans.

You read about profiling of those who are black. I believe it. I also believe it happens with Latin Americans. And it happens to those of any race, who also happen to be poor. Being poor in the U.S. is next to being criminal. I had a former doctor in town, Dr. Malcolm Butler, who told me that every week he was kicking someone out of his clinic for selling their prescriptions on the street. He said this when I said it seemed there was discrimation against the poor and the assumption that they would or were doing criminal things because of poverty. He told me being poor was a "risk factor". He's the medical director of Columbia Valley Community Health, a clinic that receives federal monies, which has a clientele that is predominantly (95%) hispanic/Latino, and 100% poor. I didn't ask Dr. Butler how he happened to find out these clients were dealing on the street, on a weekly basis. But I know there's really no way he would know or they would be found out unless he was directly working with police in exchanging information.

I completely disagree with this philosophy. Being poor is not a risk factor for crime anymore than being black or being homosexual or being a blue-collar worker. People who commit crime every day, and get away with it, are corporate CEOs and other professionals. My guess is that there is more crime (fraud, money-laundering, drug use, sexual assault, tax evasion, other sex crimes) by those who are professionals than those who are not, but they are not targeted and are able to hire costly attorneys to get them off if they have a problem. I know one former (or current?) drug dealer in town, for example, told me that he had personally sold drugs to a couple of probation officers in Wenatchee, as well as one of the judges in Wenatchee. He told me this in 2005 and he was not lying. He refused to give me names, saying he wasn't a snitch.

Discrimination of others because of race, religion, etc., is against the law. But it's not against the law to discriminate against the poor. The idea is that someone chooses to be poor. One cannot, on the other hand, choose their race, sexual identity, or religion. Which seems odd to me. How is one's religion less a choice than economic status? If the idea is that one can't help what religion they are, that they're born into it and it is influenced by family and society, what of poverty that someone is born into or falls into because of circumstances? You can't change your religion but you CAN become rich. ?! People convert to other religions and have the same opportunity and exposure for doing so, as the poor have for improving their financial or class status.

I had a professor who was teaching a class on Juvenile Justice, who argued with me that most of the people in jail were there not because they were poor and disadvantaged, or because they had less education, but because, she basically said, they were stupid. She was trying to tell me people who ended up in jail were intellectually inferior in every way and that this was also linked to poverty and crime. She claimed most didn't finish high school or go to college, because they were dumber. When I said they probably appeared "dumber" because they had barriers to completing their education, she argued they were simply not blessed with the same intelligence of normal people (who stay out of jail). I found her theory interesting when minorities are overrepresented in prisons. Did she then assume minorities were not as "smart" as whites? She had worked as a public defender for years and never believed in the people she was paid to represent. If she had thought they were all so stupid, I wonder if she defended any of them for mental incapacity or disability.

So those who end up in jail are poor, and the poor are usually stupid? According to Dr. Butler, and many others, being poor is a risk factor to being immoral. The poorer a person is, the lower their ethical standards. And according to my professor, all those poor people in jail, were just, well, dummies to begin with.

Of course profiling is real. Our entire society engages in profiling. Hence credit checks for employment at a job. If you have bad credit, you might steal from the employer. If you are poor, you may start stealing from the very same employer who won't give their employees lunch breaks and overtime.

"It is harder for a rich man to enter the kingdom of Heaven, than it is for a camel to go through the eye of a needle..."

hmmm....I'd personally like to see a reworking of the scriptures to fit current public opinion and culture, with Jesus as a CEO and his disciples as stockbrokers and attorneys.