Despite assurances about established guidelines, Arab-Americans get targeted more or less depending on world events, Husseini says. The Gulf War, World Trade Center bombing and Oklahoma City bombing all led to more reports of disparate treatment. But TWA 800, it's a sustained thing. It's becoming inzstitutionalized and permanent. Considering how long drug-courier profiles have been in use, they should be among the most exact.
Law enforcement has far more experience with drug dealers than, say, terrorists.
Police, he says, had no better success searching African-American drivers than whites. Constitutionally, opponents of profiling are still stinging from a U.S. Supreme Court decision last year that indirectly benefitted profiling as the hand that often slips into the traffic-stop glove. In Whren v. U.S. , the Court said it would not suppress evidence seized during a traffic stop just because the traffic violation was suspiciously trivial. But motorists' recourse falls under the equal protection clause. At airports, profiling critics worry that no matter what the FAA's written guidelines may say, they can't prevent airline employees from bringing preconceptions and prejudices to the job.