Racial profiling and missing persons cases

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cammy-g

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This is not the first time I have noticed this and I believe that racial profiling does exist in many missing persons cases.

To what extent does it exist? Well we know that pretty white girls are more apt to get picked up by MSM news that anyone.

The recent case here made me think of this and thought that we could explore racial profiling and whether there is any basis or someone just sees a Hispanic face and says, hey they are headed for Mexico with no basis for that to be said.

The case in question is Daniel Medina AKA Fidel Carrasco

Daniel was arrested in the Chicago area, but his poster said he was fleeing to Mexico.

I see a vast majority of posters that list "heading to Mexico" and I am wondering if there is actual information that this is planned of if the decision to add headed to Mexico is based on racial profiling.

While I realize that many cases do involve someone heading to Mexico, I feel it is wrong to just make this assumption based on heritage and have people looking in the wrong direction.

What say you?
 
I think you have a point there but I definately think there is racial bias when it comes to Amber Alerts. Look at the case of Amber Harris. She was 12 YEARS OLD and no Amber Alert was made...they assumed she was a runaway (she happened to be bi-racial as well). I know there is specific criteria for issuing Amber Alerts but she was just a little girl and I don't care if she ran away (unfortunately we now know that that was not the case) they should have issued an alert. I can't bear to think how things might have turned out for the better had an alert been issued.:(
 
I agree Amber Harris' racial make-up had much to do with the way her case was handled.

A very sad case, but like you said there is criteria to meet to issue an Amber Alert and Amber Harris did not meet. An abduction has to be witnessed and a said vehicle with a plate #.

In the good ol US of A, I see little or no reason why we can not have another alert system to fill the void of the Amber Alert system. How third world are we?
 
I'm curious to know if anyone has statistics on mising people according to race. What I mean is, are there numbers kept on how many missing Caucasians vs. missing Hispanics vs. missing blacks vs. missing Asians?
 
I would venture to say no, since the NCMEC is where most get their information from and how they list races is a bit backwards to say the least.


The vast majority of their posters list Hispanic children as White/Hisp even if they do not have a drop of white blood in their veins.


Here is just one of many posters from the NCMEC, this lists both the child as white and the abductor as white when both are not especially the dad.(ROLANDO RODRIGUEZ)
 
What is the point of listing such info if it is not accurate? If somone can't see a picture, but has the description to go by, it's not helpful at all. A sighting could be disregarded based on inaccurate information. They might as well say they are 10 feet tall Martians. I'm not trying to make fun of this, but shouldn't the aim be to distribute the most accurate info possible? I'm curious to know why such decisions/mistakes are made and if they can be corrected.
 
dulcinea said:
What is the point of listing such info if it is not accurate? If somone can't see a picture, but has the description to go by, it's not helpful at all. A sighting could be disregarded based on inaccurate information. They might as well say they are 10 feet tall Martians. I'm not trying to make fun of this, but shouldn't the aim be to distribute the most accurate info possible? I'm curious to know why such decisions/mistakes are made and if they can be corrected.
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I agree with your assessment 110%, so many times we have the public looking in wrong directions or with bad information and like you say it does little or no good.

Another such example of having bad info before the public is the cases of Purvis Parker and Quadrevion Henning. Both boys were added to the posters that are up on the walls as one crosses from Mexico into the US.

Now herein lies the problem, Border Patrol never has taken these posters down as of last week, despite being told that both boys had drowned.

Now what is the likelihood that these boys would have even crossed the border? Very little IMO But still it has been almost two months since the boys drowned but yet one agency still leaves their posters up despite being told on four different occasions that they had drowned.

It may seem like I am going on about this, but this could be used to have the public look for someone that is actually missing.
 
I agree. I always stop and look at the kids I see on missing posters to see if I recognize them by chance. If there is a child posted who has been located, he/she should be taken down so another child's picture can be up. It takes so little time and effort to do. I've never known anyone who was missing and I thank God for that but I still feel deeply for the families who do have missing loved ones. I think that if more people were personally affected by such a horrible thing they would make more of an effort. Children need to be more highly regarded. It sickens me to see what some of them must endure and it's upsetting that some people can't be bothered to do such a small thing to help.
 
cammy-g said:
I see a vast majority of posters that list "heading to Mexico" and I am wondering if there is actual information that this is planned of if the decision to add headed to Mexico is based on racial profiling.

While I realize that many cases do involve someone heading to Mexico, I feel it is wrong to just make this assumption based on heritage and have people looking in the wrong direction.

What say you?
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Many do flee to Mexico. Due to the rather corrupt and/or incompetent law enforcement in that country and the fact that until just very recently extradition from Mexico was all but impossible, it has been a great place for people wanted in the USA to go when they want to evade prosecution.
 
Eoanthropus Dawsoni said:
Many do flee to Mexico. Due to the rather corrupt and/or incompetent law enforcement in that country and the fact that until just very recently extradition from Mexico was all but impossible, it has been a great place for people wanted in the USA to go when they want to evade prosecution.
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I understand very well that many people do flee to Mexico, like Amber McEntire did and many others.

That however was not the point of my thread. The point was was just labeling someone as heading to Mexico simply because of their heritage and not actually knowing if they are indeed planning on going to Mexico.

LIke the above mentioned case of Daniel Medina, he was found in Chicago 24 hours later, if he truly was indeed planning on heading to Mexico, one would at least have thought he would have made it to Kansas by that time, thank goodness, they also looked in Chicago.
 
It's been my experience that cops usually just want the bad guy to get caught. If they have reason to believe that the guy may have went to Mexico they will say so. If they have reason to believe he may have went somewhere else, they will state that as a possibility.

I am not going to say that there is never profiling, but I do not believe that many agencies are going to say "Mexico" unless they have some reason to think a guy may have headed in that direction. If a suspect has family or gang connections, or has spent time in Mexico and is familiar with the area, then listing Mexico as a possible destination is reasonable. Criminals tend to hide where they are comfortable.
 
cammy-g said:
I would venture to say no, since the NCMEC is where most get their information from and how they list races is a bit backwards to say the least.

The vast majority of their posters list Hispanic children as White/Hisp even if they do not have a drop of white blood in their veins.
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On the contrary: ALL the Hispanic children are listed as White/Hispanic. Legally speaking, Hispanic people are considered white -- my boyfriend is of Mexican heritage and tells me these things. Hispanic is really just some miscellaneous mixture between Spanish and Native American. So they all have some white blood in their veins.
 
Rolando Rodriquez as mentioned in post #5 of this thread has since had his poster removed from the NCMEC database, either they have been recovered (missing date was 1987) or maybe it is to re-classify them as they did not have White/Hisp but were listed as White.

Maybe I should have said two drops of blood....true most all people everywhere have some amount of white or mixture but if everyone is classified as white then it would be a complete mess.
 
meggilyweggily said:
On the contrary: ALL the Hispanic children are listed as White/Hispanic. Legally speaking, Hispanic people are considered white -- my boyfriend is of Mexican heritage and tells me these things. Hispanic is really just some miscellaneous mixture between Spanish and Native American. So they all have some white blood in their veins.
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Correct. I've read this in plenty of places.
 
So in Mexico, Spain they call themselves White, I think not. I say this because while I know of many people that disagree with this classification. I was born in Tampico Mexico and grew up in Merida. I certainly do not consider my race to be White, no disrespect to white people. Both of my parents are Hispanic and that is what it says on my BC but I guess I am White now.
smile.gif
 
cammy-g said:
So in Mexico, Spain they call themselves White, I think not. I say this because while I know of many people that disagree with this classification. I was born in Tampico Mexico and grew up in Merida. I certainly do not consider my race to be White, no disrespect to white people. Both of my parents are Hispanic and that is what it says on my BC but I guess I am White now.
smile.gif
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If you're so interested in this, I suggest that you do some research at google. The term hispanic simply refers to anybody, anywhere, who has any spanish blood.

Legal terms in the USA are not necessarily legal terms in other countries.

Anyway, I disagree with your premise, that you know more than the police, when they happen to mention that they suspect that someone is headed to Mexico, that they have REASON to put it on the poster, and not that they are predjudiced.

Your opinion is obviously different than mine. I believe that law enforcement wants ALL missing persons found, no matter their race and no matter their age and no matter their educational or social background.



Be well.
 
wondering22 is correct -- I was referring to the classification in the United States, where I am from, and where I believe most of the WS posters are from. I don't have the foggiest idea what goes on in Mexico and Central and South America. My boyfriend does not consider himself to be white either.

Who's to say law enforcement can't simply be mistaken from time to time? There was one (white) guy who took off with his kids and the police thought they were in Texas, cause the guy had relatives there. They turned up in Belize. Whoops.
 
meggilyweggily said:
. My boyfriend does not consider himself to be white either.

Who's to say law enforcement can't simply be mistaken from time to time? There was one (white) guy who took off with his kids and the police thought they were in Texas, cause the guy had relatives there. They turned up in Belize. Whoops.
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I live down on the border, just minutes from Mexico and I know most on this side as well as the Mexican side do not like the classification as being white. I do not think this should be taken as offense against white people but they I am sure they would not want to be classified as Asian, Black or Hispanic.

So many posters do not even have a picture available so the only thing one can do is go by description.

I could care less if someone is green or Barney colored, lets just not have people looking for a green Barney.
 
I think it's kind of silly too, and I'm not defending it. I was just trying to explain why the NCMEC says "white/hispanic" instead of just "hispanic." On the Charley Project I don't generally mention race unless I think it's not immediately obvious from the photo.

Luckily thje NCMEC doesn't have very much non-picture posters. I think they have like three, unless you count the state clearinghouse posters the NCMEC has on their site, which sometimes don't have photos, but they're not official NCMEC posters.
 
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