US Supreme Court approves of racial profiling

"In the case of Virginia v. Moore, the high court saw no violation of David Lee Moore’s Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable searches and seizures, even though his arrest was the result of a series of Keystone Cop-like miscues and an outright violation of Virginia law.

Here’s how it played out: On Feb. 20, 2003, police officers received a radio call that a man known as “Chubs” was operating an automobile on a suspended license. Apparently, one of the officers knew that David Lee Moore went by the nickname of “Chubs.” The officers pulled over Moore’s vehicle and determined that his license had indeed been suspended. Under Virginia law, driving with a suspended license is not an arrestable offense, and the officers were obliged to issue him a citation for a future court appearance rather than take him into custody. Disregarding this clear legal mandate, however, the officers arrested Moore.

They took him to his hotel room where they searched him and found crack cocaine and $516 in cash....

But the most important fact in this case — which was ignored by the Virginia courts, the Supreme Court and the few media accounts of this litigation — is that David Lee Moore is African-American. (Portsmouth, Va., is a city of slightly more than 100,000 people, more than 50 percent of whom are black.)"