Archive: June 2021

The Alarming Numbers of Racial Profiling

Posted on June 28, 2021, byPaul Napoli

I have seen incidents of racial profiling rise to alarming numbers.

While leading plaintiff civil rights actions in such cases as Wayne Martin’s, whose life sentence was overturned after serving 11 years in jail for a crime he did not commit, I have fought against such social injustice. My work in the Flint Water Litigation resulted in a $641 million dollar settlement for residents — residents who were marginalized because of their color and low-income status. As co-counsel with Ben Crump on the Robert Maraj (Nicki Minaj’s father), Keyon Harrold Jr./Arlo Hotel and other cases, I recognize racial profiling is a human rights issue.

Racial profiling deprives people of color of their dignity and justice. Using race or ethnicity as a factor to determine which people are suspicious enough to warrant police stops, questioning, searches, and other routine police practices is a human rights violation and needs to stop. Hundreds of violent police encounters and hate crimes each year solidify racial discrimination as a public health issue, as well. There need to be clear legal consequences for racial profiling. Otherwise, we can only expect it to persist, and for those who practice it to continue evading justice while countless lives are interrupted, or worse, ended.

My article on Medium, The Price of Profiling, explains why in more depth.