Assemblyman Calls NYPD to Profile
Assemblyman Calls For NYPD To Use Profiling In War Against Terror
July 31, 2005
A state lawmaker is pressing local authorities to use ethnic profiling in their fight against terrorism.
Brooklyn Assemblyman Dov Hikind is urging the New York Police Department to use terrorist profiling when it conducts subway bag searches.
Hikind says that purely random bag checks may be "politically correct" – but he says they leave the city's transit system "outrageously vulnerable."
"There is a terrorist profile for a potential suicide bomber, and it's not the 75-year-old grandmother, with sloping shoulders, who has an oversized tote bag firmly tucked under her arm," Hikind said in a statement released Sunday. "Randomly checking her bag may be politically correct, but it doesn't cut it when we're trying to protect millions of mass transit riders."
"We have to give the NYPD every single tool in the war on terrorism," Hikind added. "It's a fact of life that the London suicide bombers on July 7th and July 21st fit a very precise intelligence profile."
Authorities believe Islamic extremists were responsible for both London terror attacks this month, as was the case in the September 11, 2001, attacks in the United States.
In response, the NYPD has released a statement saying: "Racial profiling is illegal, of doubtful effectiveness, and against department policy."
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