NYTimes Letters to the Editor

To the Editor:

Re "When the Profile Fits the Crime," by Paul Sperry (Op-Ed, July 28):

Responses to terrorism like Mr. Sperry's make me wonder whether the goal of Islamic terrorists is really to kill us, or to have us dismantle our way of life until the United States is a police state.

Racial profiling is more than just prejudicial: it's unconstitutional. The Fourth Amendment guarantees that people will be safe from "unreasonable searches and seizures" barring a showing of probable cause. There are only limited exceptions (like hot pursuit).

Almost every legal opinion on the matter has held that skin color or other superficial markings of ethnicity or race cannot, alone, create probable cause. It's not about being politically correct; it's about the rule of law.

Too many people are now prepared to undo the very freedoms that make us who we are as Americans in the (naïve) hope that it will make us safer. If we are willing to guarantee the rule of law only until we are sufficiently afraid, then we aren't guaranteeing it at all.

Nathaniel Falda
Brooklyn, July 28, 2005
The writer is a lawyer.