" Basically, a traffic stop is "an interpretative act," the article explains. The officer has to determine and identify the "physical and behavioral clues that indicate a violation of the law" (Vito, 91). The officer has to "translate those cues into legal procedures and rules of evidence." This takes training, and when the dust has settled, the question that is important is was their "probable cause" to justify the stop, the search, the ticket or the arrest? An article in the online version of the San Francisco Chronicle (Fagan, 2008) refers to a situation in Palo Alto, California, in which the police chief, Lynne Johnson, was forced to apologize after issuing a directive to her officers "that appeared to order officers to stop African-Americans on the streets in an effort to solve a rash of robberies" (Fagan, 2008). In fact there had been 16 street robberies in the Palo Alto area since June, 2008; the chief (who is Caucasian) told her officers that, when in a neighborhood where a lot of robberies had been committed, if they "...see an African-American,...

This seems clearly to be racial profiling, and when it comes through an order from the chief of police, it is very serious. In this case, the apology from the chief of police was helpful, but the article pointed out that "the wounds" from the racially charged order will "take some work to heal."
Works Cited

Fagan, Kevin. (2008). Palo Alto police chief denies racial profiling. San Francisco

Chronicle. Retrieved Dec. 2, 2008, at http://www.sfgate.com.

Racial Profiling Data Collection Resource Center. (2008). Northwestern University.

Retrieved Nov. 28, 2008, at http://www.racialprofilinganalysis.neu.edu/

Ridgeway, Greg. (2006). Assessing the Effect of Race bias in Post-traffic Stop

Outcomes Using Propensity Scores. Journal of Quantitative Criminology, 22(1),

Vito, Gennaro F., & Walsh, William F. (2006). Suspicion and traffic stops: crime control

or racial profiling.…