Rep. Steve King: "Profiling has always been an important component of legitimate law enforcement"

[Ed Barrow]

Iowa Republican Congressman Steve King said on the floor of the House last night that racial profiling is an important component of law enforcement.

And, once again, the group PoliticalCorrection.org is chastising his comments.

Here are his quotes, as the group has already outlined on its Web site:


"Some claim that the Arizona law will bring about racial discrimination profiling. First let me say, Mr. Speaker, that profiling has always been an important component of legitimate law enforcement. If you can’t profile someone, you can’t use those common sense indicators that are before your very eyes. Now, I think it’s wrong to use racial profiling for the reasons of discriminating against people, but it’s not wrong to use race or other indicators for the sake of identifying that are violating the law."


King continued:


"It’s just a common sense thing. Law enforcement needs to use common sense indicators. Those common sense indicators are all kinds of things, from what kind of clothes people wear – my suit in my case - what kind of shoes people wear, what kind of accident they have, um, the, the type of grooming they might have, there’re, there’re all kinds of indicators there and sometimes it’s just a sixth sense and they can’t put their finger on it. But these law enforcement officers, if they were going to be discriminating against people on the sole basis of race, singling people out, that’d be going on already."



http://blogs.desmoinesregister.com/dmr/index.php/2010/06/15/king-racial-profiling-is-important-for-law-enforcement/

[RedRocco]

1. So in other words

if I'm poor, or work for a living, or I am non-white, I must be a criminal? And if I'm white, and put on a $5000 suit, I'm completely innocent of anything ever?

[donco6]

2. The only word I question there is "legitimate".

The rest of the statement is irrefutable.

[caledesi]

3. "Slavery has always been an important component

 of legitimate work."(ask anyone who is owned) - 1862


Hello?  It's 2010!  :puke:

[gratuitous]

4. Steve is absolutely right

When I see comments from an elected official, and that official is a Republican, my default setting is douchebaggery. It saves a LOT of time, and I'm almost never wrong. Of course, King is pretty sure that he'll never be pulled aside by some tough-looking yahoos and required to show his papers knowing that he might very well never be heard from again. But wouldn't it be a useful object lesson if it did happen to him?

[notadmblnd]

5. Just because something has always been doesn't make it right

[rurallib]

6. King's district is 99% white - the rest are future criminals.