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Jan. 9, 2022 - Radio Renaissance - Jared Taylor
13:31
Jared Taylor on "Hardball with Chris Matthews" (1999)
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Violent crime and race relations.
Here to discuss these two issues is Jared Tower, president and founder of the New Century Foundation.
He joins us to talk about the color of crime.
His foundation's study on race, crime, and violence in America.
Jared Tower, thank you for joining us.
It's a pleasure.
Let me ask you about your report in the context of the following.
Not many weeks ago, the New Jersey state troopers were discovered to be racially profiling suspects along a highway.
They were stopping people who were African-American or Hispanic-looking as they drove up probably the Garden State Parkway or the New Jersey Turnpike.
I've been on those places many times.
The governor of New Jersey, Christy Todd Whitman, has stopped the police from doing that.
She said it's wrong to stop people.
Even if there's whatever reason you have, you cannot prejudge people and stop them in their cars.
What do you think of that profiling and the fact that they've stopped doing it?
My point would be the police do all kinds of profiling.
They do age profiling because they know young people commit more crimes than old people.
They do sex profiling because they know men commit more crimes than women.
If they spent as much time chasing after old ladies as they do young men, they'd never get their jobs done.
We all understand this because the facts are there.
We know young men are more violent and more crime-prone than old ladies.
The fact is, this report has the data from federal crime statistics to show you that in terms of violent crime, blacks are as much more likely to commit violent crimes than whites as men are more likely to commit them than women.
We all know that we are in greater danger.
Of strangers who are men than strangers who are women.
And we take appropriate action because of that.
The fact is, from a statistical point of view, we are just as justified in distinguishing on the basis of race as we are in distinguishing on the basis of sex.
And to ask the police, yes, sure, keep doing your sex profiling, keep doing your age profiling, but pretend that race doesn't matter.
That's crazy.
It's simply crazy.
It is one aspect of a criminal profile that police must bear in mind.
And every experienced officer, I believe, would agree.
Let's go to Niger Ennis.
He's with it.
He's a national spokesman for CORE, the Congress of Racial Equality.
Respond, sir.
My response would be, you know, this issue is very sensitive, particularly when you're talking about the Bed-Stuy's and the Harlem's and the Watts's, but what if we were talking about Little Odessa in Brooklyn or Sheepshead Bay where there is a crime problem among white Russians?
Would police be criminal in nature for profiling white Russians or having a certain sensitivity to white Russians in that community?
No. Racial profiling as one of many elements used in profiling is...
It's not wrong.
What police have to be better at doing, and they can only do this with the cooperation of the communities they serve, is distinguishing within the race, distinguishing within the communities those individuals that look like criminals, act like criminals, talk like criminals, walk like criminals,
drive cars like criminals.
I mean, we live in a culture.
Well, let me ask you, Nigel, up or down?
Yes. Is it a right thing to do this kind of racial profiling like they had in the New Jersey Turnpike?
No, no.
Absolutely not like the New Jersey Turnpike because it was generalizing in the case of the New Jersey Turnpike.
Cops, but it is not wrong to have race as one of many elements in profiling a particular type of crime.
I think once you agree that a certain group is more likely to commit crimes, I don't see the objection to the kind of profiling that the Jersey police were doing.
You have to take reality into consideration.
Let's talk to a guy from New Jersey.
He's a police officer.
He's Sergeant DeLacy Davis.
He's with the East Orange Police.
Sir, you've been very much involved in this debate.
Respond. Yes, definitely.
First of all, I respect the fact that they've done the study.
The reality is that it was based upon reported crimes.
Whether Susan Smith's the young lady who accused a black man of killing her children that she killed are part of that report.
Whether state troopers, whether state troopers who changed the race of the people that they were stopping are part of that report.
The reality is that you cannot criminalize and entitlement.
race or group of people because you've been able to finagle numbers to make them reflect what the racist part of our society wants them to reflect.
No, you can't target people solely based upon their race.
And no, we don't know definitively that blacks are more violent than whites.
The
The reality is that we're committing less crime than many of the other groups.
You're simply comparing apples to oranges when you use the stats as you've done them in this report.
No, that's completely incorrect.
These numbers come straight from the Justice Department.
They come from not only reports of massive surveys.
They come from arrest records.
These numbers are bulletproof.
They come from your report, which I have, says they come from the Uniform Crime Report.
They come from the Justice Department.
They come from the Bureau of Statistics.
And those reports are gathered from police departments, of which my department and others submit them, based upon the reports that officers take.
And I'm saying to you, that's why two New Jersey troopers are being charged with We're falsifying public records because they changed the official record.
And that doesn't keep other officers from doing the same thing.
Sergeant and Gerald, wait until we get one other person here.
Lawrence Otis Graham, he's a nationally known attorney and commentator on race, politics, and class in America.
He's got a new book, Our Kind of People, Inside America's Black Upperclass.
Lawrence, thanks for joining us.
What do you make of this?
What's your position?
Well, for one thing, I've read this report.
I've also read the statistics that were offered by the Justice Department.
And for one thing, I have to say this is a misreading of statistics because for one thing, One thing, it does not take into account that blacks are four times less likely to report crimes that are perpetrated against them to the police because of their high level of distrust of the police.
And we saw those examples of how blacks view the police when we look at situations of Abner Louima and Mr. Diallo, who was also victimized by the police officers.
But another point has to be stated.
But wouldn't that make the statistics even tougher if they didn't report the crime?
In a black area, for example, in a neighborhood where you have a black neighborhood, Well, I'm actually talking about crimes that are perpetrated against them by whites, particularly with regard...
And when you look at the overall statistics, and this is reported by the Justice Department, 61% of all assaults are committed by whites.
But we're getting into a racial blame game here, which gets beside the point, because, in fact, what we should be really focusing on is the whole issue of what I think Mr. Taylor was addressing, and that is...
You know, I don't want to get into statistics here because I don't think that's the issue.
Let me just, as a moderator, let me get back to Sergeant Davis.
I want to ask you, Sergeant, because you made an interesting point.
You challenged all the stats that Jared's brought before us here today.
But let me just ask you to speculate.
If these statistics were accurate, even then, would it be appropriate to stop a guy driving along the New Jersey Turnpike or the Garden State Parkway or anywhere along Route 70 or Route 95 or Route 80 across this country because they have to match a profile?
not because they happen to match a racial profile independent of anything else right the Constitution guarantees on the fourth amendment right against unreasonable search and seizure and the courts have maintained that that would be an unreasonable search
Jared, can you stop a person legitimately simply because they're black because you have a stat that shows that blacks, to a certain number, are involved in the drug trade?
Does that justify stopping a black man who's driving with his family?
Up to New York for the weekend.
No. I mean, as I said before, police are doing all kinds of profiling based on all kinds of characteristics, and race happens to be a very important one of them.
But back to these statistics, which I think are important.
These numbers include not just arrest records.
They include records from the National Crime Victimization Survey, which surveys 100,000 Americans and asks them who is doing the robberies, who is doing the assaults.
And those numbers agree remarkably with the arrest statistics.
We'll come back and talk about profiling a little bit more, but also about hate crimes and issues like that that have been addressed in this Color of Crime report.
Thank you.
We'll be back with more Hardball on CNBC.
Hardball on CNBC.
There can be no question but that racial profiling exists at some level.
I am the biggest supporter of New Jersey state troopers.
But let me make one thing very clear.
I am the worst nightmare of anyone whose actions will undermine our confidence in our men and women in blue.
Let me just get into this issue a little bit more.
I'm not going to take sides, because I think the sides are pretty clear, and both sides can take care of themselves in this debate.
If you're an African-American guy, and say you're 35 years old, and you're a salesman, and you're driving through a neighborhood, And you're stopped.
And you're having a bad day.
You're just having a bad day.
You're not making your sales quote or whatever.
And the cop stops you and slams you against the car and says, let's see your papers.
Let's see your driver's ID.
I want to look at the trunk.
And afterwards you say, well, he only stopped me because I was black because there's certain stats on drug smuggling in this area.
That is a terrible situation to put a man in because he may not be in a good mood that day.
He may get very angry at that police officer and just a minute and get arrested for his behavior because he's arrested.
An arrest in itself.
Sergeant, you jump in here.
It seems to me an arrest in itself is a very aggressive step to take against a citizen of the United States and to take such an aggressive move without any evidence of criminal behavior.
Boy, that's not going to happen.
That's not going to happen if he resists.
Of course it happens all the time.
Let's not say it's not going to happen.
It happens across the country.
That's why I'm on my way to Michigan this weekend to address those kinds of issues.
But the reality is that the Constitution is supposed to protect citizens against that, and they say that the officer is supposed to have reasonable suspicion, which leads to probable cause.
He has to be able to articulate something other than it was a black person driving.
That's why I stopped him.
Okay. As I've said many times, there are many elements that go into this.
It's not as though every man out there is a criminal.
Some men who are innocent are going to be stopped.
Are they going to start some class action lawsuit about this?
The ACLU is probably crazy enough to start one.
And the police are even going to be more hogtied.
The argument that you're making is a suggestion that there really is a presumption of guilt if you're black.
Because your point is to suggest that if you're black, it's reasonable and understandable for a police officer to stop you in a car.
That is part of a profile.
And look, everybody in the car...
But that creates nothing but racial hysteria.
You're creating nothing but hysteria.
It's a sort of like 1915 birth of a nation mentality of batten down the hatches because black people are taken over and are all criminals.
Let's go to Niger about the question here, the larger question of civil rights and civil liberties.
We've heard from Sergeant Davis.
Is it, in fact, a Fourth Amendment right not to be bothered by police and perhaps ginned up into a situation?
You know how it's on a hot day?
We're talking about road rage.
You're stopped by a policeman, and you know the only reason you're stopped is because you're a coward.
Go ahead, Nigel.
By virtue of just having a particular race or ethnicity or sex or religion, no, you are protected against that type of harassment.
But again, race as one of many elements, particularly if it's a particular type of crime in a particular neighborhood.
I mean, the fact of the matter is, Chris, you know, in a culture that we live in today that tends to glorify criminal chic, criminals don't hide the fact that they're...
They look like criminals.
They dress a certain way.
They drive particular types of cars.
And cops have to be better and have to work closely with the community and community leaders in distinguishing good kids from bad kids.
It is not that impossible to do.
Let me try to find common ground, although I know I won't find it.
If somebody's driving around in a big jukebox pimp mobile with some incredible, outrageous car, are you saying that that's justification for assuming this guy's in the criminal element?
I'm saying that, yes, that person is going to pay a That is absolutely right, sir.
If indeed, yes, yes, absolutely.
I'm going to say, indeed, indeed, that is really offensive.
And it's so offensive because it suggests that a black person driving in a car like that through Greenwich, Connecticut should be stopped because there are very few blacks living in Greenwich, Connecticut.
No, it doesn't suggest that at all.
What it says is that if there's a particular type of crime in a particular type of neighborhood committed by a particular type of age, race, gender, etc., that a cop would be a fool not to take those elements into consideration.
But to a real policeman, Sergeant Davis, is it ever legitimate to make a judgment based on lifestyle, clothing, manner, whatever?
Only if those are several of the elements that have been put forth as the suspect.
For example, if a witness says, I've just been raped or robbed, and the person was driving a vehicle with a loud stereo, they walk with a limp, they've got a certain scar, mark, or tattoo, then by all means, that's reasonable suspicion and probable cause.
But simply giving, as you just gave me, a so-called pimp mobile, whatever that may be, and we stop it because there's a loud stereo and the guy looks like he's in a sharp car, unacceptable.
Okay. Look, the fact is, practically everybody in America understands that race is a factor.
Even Jesse Jackson.
Remember that remark of his when he's walking down the street at night and he turns around?
He's relieved to find white people.
There's a big difference there.
He's not a official of the government.
No, he's different than a police officer.
A police officer can't make those kind of judgments.
Of course not.
That's the seat of the pants.
Go ahead.
And Jesse should be nervous.
He's $3 million ahead of those kids.
I understand.
That's haves versus have-nots.
No, no, no.
That has nothing to do with race.
Of course it does.
He's right.
Thank you, Jerry Tower.
Thank you, Laurie Sotis Graham.
Thank you.
Sergeant Davis, thank you.
Who else did I forget?
Niger Ines, thank you always.
Rivera lies up next.
And tomorrow, he shocked the political establishment with his upset victory in the Minnesota governor's race.
We'll have Jesse Venturi here to talk about whether he's going to run to replace Bill Clinton.
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