NEW: McInnis Endorsed Profiling Solely On Basis of Ethnicity, Religion, Age and Gender

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by: davidsirota

( – promoted by Colorado Pols)

NOTE: We will be discussing this new story on the AM760 morning show from 7-10am on Friday. McInnis today formally declined to appear on the morning show to discuss these issues, but he will continue to have an open invitation to appear.

In his once-obscure and now-famous U.S. House floor speech in 2001, Scott McInnis talked a lot about his belief that police should be in the business of “threat profiling,” using “ethnic background” as a key measure of “threat.” McInnis seemed to suggest that ethnicity should be one of many metrics police should use to profile – the implication being that profiling is not bigoted if ethnicity/race is only one of many metrics.

This is a pretty obvious sleight of hand – he’s trying to leave himself a way to pretend he’s not a racist by vaguely implying that he only believes in profiling that couples other significant non-ascribed characteristics (like, say, criminal behavior) with ascribed characteristics.* Except, he doesn’t really believe that. How do we know? Because he said so quite explicitly.

“We all use profiling…I mean, not using it right now is simply a diversion to our safety. And our safety has got to come first…for example, these hijackers, we knew that they were all in a certain age group. We knew that they were all male. We knew that they were all Arab. We knew that they were of the Islamic faith. When you put all of those factors together, you are darn right you better pull those people aside and start asking some questions.”

So there’s the key point: By this standard, McInnis believes police “darn right better pull people aside and start asking questions” based not on people’s observed criminal behavior, but solely on their age, gender, ethnicity and religion.**

To understand how this directly relates to McInnis’ pivotal role in today’s national immigration debate and how it shows what McInnis is really supporting, replace a few key words from McInnis’ 2001 quote with the typical (and abhorrent) conservative language around immigration today:

“We all use profiling…I mean, not using it right now is simply a diversion to our safety. And our safety has got to come first…for example, these illegals, we knew that they were all in a certain age group. We knew that they were all male. We knew that they were all Latino. We knew that they were of the Catholic faith. When you put all of those factors together, you are darn right you better pull those people aside and start asking some questions.”

Sadly, that hypothetical quote isn’t a stretch – considering McInnis’ endorsement of the Arizona law, it’s the logical analogue of his views on profiling as it relates to the issue of immigration and anti-Latino racial profiling today. It really couldn’t be clearer: Scott McInnis believes that police “darn right better pull people aside and start asking questions” of people based solely on an individual’s age, gender, ethnicity and religion.

Put this together with his endorsement of Arizona’s law which encourages this very kind of profiling, and we can be confident that’s the kind of profiling he’d aim to empower police to do here in Colorado if elected governor. And based on his very detailed comments in 2001, it’s clear that his so-called “threat profile” would target Latinos.

* NOTE: I don’t personally buy this logic in the same way I don’t believe someone can be half pregnant. Racial/ethnic profiling is racial/ethnic profiling regardless of what other information that profiling is coupled with.

** As if you need more proof that McInnis’ standards are racially/ethnically motivated, remember that we didn’t hear McInnis call for young, white Christian men to be “pulled aside and questioned” after the Oklahoma City bombing. After all, that might have meant McInnis himself would have been detained.

15 thoughts on “NEW: McInnis Endorsed Profiling Solely On Basis of Ethnicity, Religion, Age and Gender”

MADCO says:

April 30, 2010 at 7:34 am

I think this is just the tip of the iceberg.

Next, McInnis will be endorsing the AZ “long form birth certificate” to get on the ballot deal.

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1. Cartesian Doubt says:
  
  April 30, 2010 at 5:43 pm
  
  and title these fascist attempts at institutional racism “fuck’em if they’re not white.” Stop this “we/re doing this because the federal gummint isn’t doing anything about illegal immigration” nonsense.
  
  John McCain supported immigration reform, back when he was a maverick. Now it’s all goos-er, lockstep.
  
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JR SMITH'S RADAR DISH says:

April 30, 2010 at 5:36 pm

congrats Mayor. this game is over.

McInnis is an unbelievable piece of garbage and I hope this ends his career and he gets indicted for tax fraud for not claiming all that lovely elk on his returns.

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1. ClubTwitty says:
  
  April 30, 2010 at 5:38 pm
  
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Cartesian Doubt says:

April 30, 2010 at 5:48 pm

In detail, without parsing words, and unrelentingly until he answers completely and to the satisfaction of the people of Colorado.

If he refuses (as with his tax returns), he should be publicly considered another ignorant douchebag R tea-party-courting career politician. But I repeat myself.

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Ignatius O'Reilly says:

April 30, 2010 at 6:05 pm

being met by a collective ho-hum by most other voters. I think the Arizona law sucks, but polls show an overwhelming majority of Coloradans don’t. The lefty froth over the AZ law, and McInnis’ embracing of it, is a little like lefty outrage over the end of affirmative action or the passage of Amendment 2. For better or worse (and I think it’s for worse) most voters just aren’t with lefties on this, and my bet is the issue is a political loser for Dems.

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1. ClubTwitty says:
  
  April 30, 2010 at 6:17 pm
  
  Follow me through the following exercise-
  
  Say 30% of voters are party S, overwhelmingly in favor of bad law Z; 30% are party B, strongly (less overwhelmingly) opposed; remainder are in neither party, and more roughly split. Add in demographic L, a growing force, which loathes bad law Z and is now motivated perhaps like never before to act, a growing demographic that any party S or B–interested in long-term viability–would be completely crazy to push away, being pushed away by bad law Z.
  
  Multiply by factor m (for mid-term–its all about getting out the base)/tea partier turnout * number of fractured GOP candidates
  
  Show me that party S > 50%.
  
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  1. ClubTwitty says:
    
    April 30, 2010 at 6:18 pm
    
    don’t know where those other terms came from
    
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  2. shrubHugger says:
    
    April 30, 2010 at 7:34 pm
    
    I was told there would be no math
    
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    1. Voyageur says:
      
      April 30, 2010 at 10:21 pm
      
      into a pie chart!
      
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2. sxp151 says:
  
  April 30, 2010 at 7:49 pm
  
  but they will be soon, thanks to this.
  
  The bill has weak support and strong opposition, and I’m talking about passion here, not numbers. Look at the people who would change their vote based on this. How many people who were planning to vote for Hickenlooper are going to change their votes because McInnis said this? Not many. How many people who would have voted for McInnis will now oppose him over this? I’d think a lot of moderates and a lot of Hispanics would be in this column.
  
  Politically it’s not at all like affirmative action or Amendment 2, because almost all the people who supported those things already supported Democrats. So it didn’t change many votes. Hispanic support for Democrats is much less solid than African-American support or LGBT support, but this will change that. When you start seeing 90% or 95% of Hispanics voting Democratic, the Republicans will lose power in the West pretty quickly.
  
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  1. thethinker says:
    
    April 30, 2010 at 9:30 pm
    
    the number of people who are looking for someone who will actually enforce laws against illegal immigration.
    
    A lot of Democrats I know are already soft on Hickenlooper because of his recent comments criticizing environmentalists. We are also looking for someone who understands that Colorado and the US cannot continue to add 1.5 million immigrants to the country every year; growing the US population from 310 million to 460 million and Colorado from 5 – 10 million. That person does not appear to be Hickenlooper.
    
    It probably isn’t McGinnis either, but I’ve already heard some of my Democratic friens say they will vote for whomever will support stricter enforcement of immigration laws – such as requiring employers to utilize E-verify (shot down in committee by Democrats in Colorado) or an Arizona style law.
    
    And, I think there are a lot of Latinos who would actually like to see our immigration laws enforced, as they are often the ones most affected by competition for jobs and depression of wages by illegal immigration and mass immigration.
    
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    1. Phoenix Rising says:
      
      April 30, 2010 at 10:26 pm
      
      Look what happened to California after Prop 187(?) – Latinos swung heavily Democratic and became more active in the state.
      
      Arizona has more Hispanic people than California, and they have been, like most Hispanic populations, less likely to vote than average.
      
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    2. Phoenix Rising says:
      
      April 30, 2010 at 10:27 pm
      
      Yes, I think there are a lot of Latinos who would like to see our immigration laws enforced.
      
      But I am guessing they’d rather not have to carry a passport or birth certificate with them everywhere they go to avoid the racial profiling that the AZ bill essentially promotes.
      
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    3. dukeco1 says:
      
      May 1, 2010 at 5:53 am
      
      say that they would, under any circumstances, vote for Scott McInnis over John Hickenlooper, regardless of his recent comments.
      
      If there is a Democrat out there that will do so, can we hear it from you personally instead of second hand? And please tell us why?
      
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