Respect and partnership are undermined. As that injustice extends through a community, our hopes for long-term, sustained reductions in violence are damaged. Justice, Freedom, Equality. It turns a group of citizens into a suspected and harassed class and corrupts our police force with racist assumptions. And in a larger sense, the mistrust it engenders threatens democracy itself.
Democracy is founded upon and sustained by law.
It can succeed only when there is the shared will not merely to obey the law, but, in fact, support and enforce it. That shared will is created by fair administration of justice and equal protection under law. But racial profiling destroys the sense of a shared responsibility, by unjustly pitting the law against one community. We know that a house divided against itself cannot stand. Gov. Glendening and I strongly urge you to pass House Bill 303 so that Maryland can continue both to reduce crime and to fulfill the promise of equal protection under law.