By the time he testified before the State Senate Judiciary Committee, Mr. Verniero had been nominated to the State Supreme Court, was awaiting confirmation and had grudgingly come to the conclusion that -- oops! -- maybe profiling existed after all.
Although forms of offender profiling existed before their research, Douglas, Ressler and Burgess are often credited as helping to establish the bureau's distinct behavioral science method of profiling criminals.
Meanwhile, the City Council passed an ordinance requiring officers to file reports after every traffic stop, a tacit acknowledgment that racial profiling existed.
The governor refused to discuss the memo -- and the implication that officials knew racial profiling existed -- in detail, citing several pending lawsuits as her reason.
On the contrary, the Whitman administration, and those before hers, denied that racial profiling existed until pressure from black ministers and a federal Justice Department investigation forced Mrs. Whitman to finally admit something needed to be done.
That he ends up being treated with the crassest insensitivity, gleefully humiliated and eventually beaten is testimony that racial profiling existed long before we had a name for it.
