From: James Rogers (jamesr@best.com)
Date: Tue Feb 06 2001 - 12:38:56 MST
At 11:25 AM 2/6/2001 -0600, Chuck Kuecker wrote:
>It's well known that the FBI has issued "guidelines" for police that state
>that pick-up trucks are an indicator of extremist group membership. Any
>religious, gun, or Constitutional stickers are to be treated as an
>indication that the driver is possibly armed and dangerous. God help you
>if you are also wearing camo at the time...
I never put bumper stickers on any of my vehicles, primarily for the reason
that it makes it much more difficult to profile me or agitate anyone's
prejudices while driving. Along the same lines of reasoning, I have my
vehicles tagged to the locales where they fit in, making it easier to blend
in with the locals (big American truck - Nevada, European sports sedan -
California).
The "guidelines" for profiling people don't usually fly in locales where a
significant fraction of the population meets the profile. They are for
areas where most people don't meet the profile. Mostly I just try to be
un-memorable, which means nothing too pretty or too ugly for the locale I
am in (as judged by local standards). I've personally never been harrassed
by cops while driving and have only been pulled over for blatant violations
of the law, but then, I don't really look interesting. I *have* seen a lot
of profiling by the cops, but it is of the sort where they only pull over
cheap cars in expensive neighborhoods (California), or only pull over
sedans with California plates (Nevada). The prejudices are there, but they
aren't arbitrary; they attempt to meet the local definition of riff-raff,
whatever that may be.
-James Rogers
jamesr@best.com
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