You get the idea that San Antonio's trying to be stylish. "For the second time in less than a year, the way San Antonio police treat minorities — whether it's the rate at which officers search African-American drivers or the number of times they use force on Hispanics and blacks — has brought the department into sharp focus." Time for the NAACP's favorite game, Tarring the Reputation of a City's Police Force!

Here's a tellng point: "...blacks were more than three times as likely as whites to face certain types of police searches. Yet police found contraband in the searches at about the same rate for both races." Hm... so police are searching whites and blacks and yielding about the same percentages. But it continues, "a finding that civil rights groups said shows the disparate treatment was unwarranted." Looks to me like the overall could-be-carrying-contraband profile needs to be adjusted so that the searches are yielding more success across the board. It sucks that people are embarrassed when they're searched, but if the searches yield a certain percentage of success, then the race of the searchees don't seem to be an issue.

But according to the same findings in this report, "San Antonio police stop minority and white drivers at rates that are roughly similar to their share of the population." On the whole (look towards the end of the article), SA is scrupulously fair when it comes to local racial proportionality of stops, searches, citations, everything. But "A lopsided pattern emerges in searches where officers flex their discretion." Blacks do take a big hit there.

The anecdotal stuff towards the middle of the column is, well, laughable.

The rest of the article's pretty dry--the usual racial profiling data boilerplate. Some of it's interesting, most of it's not. Read it anyhow if you're from SA. It's hard to get worked up over this stuff. I predict a task force, some chest-pounding, and more crime, most likely against minorities.