If a suspected child abductor is on the loose, it is a violation of their 14th Amendment rights for law enforcement to issue a physical profile of the suspect to help catch them. (Or any criminals for that matter, such as the Tsarnev brothers). For example, an alert might describe a suspect as "male with brown hair and blue eyes, mid 30s, about 185 lbs, and an R. Kelly tattoo on his left shoulder - last seen wearing a grey hoodie, driving a blue Ford Explorer" By doing so they're discriminating against people who meet a certain physical profile, or wear grey hoodies - or people who drive Ford Explorers, etc. So they aren't Constitutionally allowed to profile the suspect and promote discrimination against certain groups of people. They have to pretend that the child abductor is just as likely to be a 70 year old handicapped woman, or 7 year old boy with high functioning autism. Anything else is discriminating against people who have certain physical attributes/wear certain clothes/drive certain vehicles, et cetera. And this is a gross violation the Constitutional rights of child abductors which our Founders fought and died for
You understand the difference between profiling when a crime has already occurred and profiling a hypothetical future crime that may never happen, right?
Really? It is a constitutional violation to describe alleged criminals? That does not sound quite right to me. In fact, it sounds rather fictional. I daresay that a physical description of an alleged criminal is well within the Constitution.
Yes, yes it does. So when you have a crime committed, shall we not hunt for the accused simply because you lost an argument in another thread?
If that is the only information on a known perp, it has to be released so that people at least know who to look at again. Usually, they have a license number on the vehicle and release that, too. Hot pursuit rules have to be a little more flexible, and the possibility of unjust harm is less in hot pursuit than in a cold case.
How is it discrimination to put out a discription of a specific person -- it's not very likely that a discription with 5 traits (hair type, hair color, skin tone, clothing, vehicles, and location) is likely to end in a dragnet of everyone of the same race. And as for "fair trial" -- the trial usually isn't for months, so most people would not remember a story told months ago.
It's not profiling if you are giving out KNOWN information. It's only profiling if they are guessing at a suspect's race, based on assumptions. If a black guy robs a bank, and it's known that he is black, it's not illegal or unconstitutional to give out his race to help catch him.
