NEWSRACIAL PROFILING

Patricia Spottedcrow, the 26 year-old mother of four who was convicted of selling $31 of marijuana to a police informant, has had her 12 year prison sentence reduced to eight years with four years of probation.

While the reduction in her sentence shows understanding, it is not justice and does not go far enough. As Spottedcrow's attorney, Josh Welch puts it, she shouldn't be in jail at all:

"Nobody understands why this woman is serving this long of a sentence for this type of crime. Look at other states; you can commit this same crime and it's not illegal. That's insane. She sold $30 of marijuana for gas money and food money for her family. It's stupid. It's wrong. But you don't go to prison for eight or 12 years for that. You shouldn't go to prison period."

When a few passengers on an Atlantic Southeast Airlines flight, a carrier run by Delta, noticed two imams dressed in Islamic garb on their flight on Friday, they asked that the passengers be removed.

So what did the pilot do? He went right ahead and kicked the Muslim passengers off the flight!

Masudur Rahman and Mohamed Zaghloul, who hold high religious positions in the Muslim community, were heading from Tennessee to North Carolina when the incident occurred. According to Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the civil rights group Council on American-Islamic Relations, the men "went through security, even went through secondary security, and got on the plane."

The plane was taxiing out when the passengers complained that they were uncomfortable with the men being on their flight.

In an ironic twist of fate, the men were headed to North Carolina for a conference on prejudice against Muslims, or Islamaphobia.

This month, Wisconsin became the latest state to join a federal program that will lead to skyrocketing deportations of hardworking people and a scary uptick in civil rights violations in the state.

The program, called "Secure Communities", works like this: When someone is arrested, state or local officials can run the fingerprints through an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) database to determine the person's criminal or immigration history. If local officials receive a "hit", immigration officials are notified and investigate the case to determine whether that person should be deported.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement claims that the program's purpose is to find and deport those convicted of major drug, national security or violent crimes - a goal that most folks can agree on.

You’re an accomplished international journalist based in Jerusalem, one of the most prestigious assignments in the global media industry.

The country’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, invites you to a private cocktail party, an annual gala event he hosts for international journalists.

What happens when you get there?

Apparently, that depends...

If you’re Arab, have an Arab name or are even talking to someone who has an Arab name, you will be taken aside, questioned at length, sent through a security screening multiple times and strip searched.

If you are none of the above, welcome to the party.

Such was the vibe on January 11, when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's security detail strip searched a number of high profile foreign journalists as they tried to enter an invitation-only cocktail party somewhat akin to the annual White House Correspondents' Dinner. The purpose of the event? To reach out to journalists.

The epicenter of crime in the black community, at least according to the Orange County Florida Sheriff's Department, is the neighborhood barbershop.

I guess anytime there is a group of more than two or three black men gathered in one place, brandishing weapons - in this case, hair clippers and scissors - and with a commonality of purpose - getting a little taken off the top - it all adds up to criminal activity.

Last year, more than a dozen Orange County deputies, all heavily armed,  stormed nine neighborhood barbershops in Pine Hills, Florida, an unincorporated area just outside of Orlando,  in a series of raids aimed at uncovering criminal activity. To their credit the deputies did make a total of 37 arrests, although 34 of those arrested were charged with heinous crime of "barbering without a license," which in the state of Florida, and probably everywhere else for that matter, is a misdemeanor.

To make matters even worse, the raids were conducted without warrants. Why bother with going before a judge to show probable cause that a crime is being committed? The heck with the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which guards against unreasonable searches and seizures! Instead just do like the Orange County Sheriff's department and tag along with inspectors from the Florida Department of Professional Regulation who have the authority to enter barbershops and hair salons to check for licensing violations.

Those arrested during the raids were taken out in handcuffs and transported to the county jail.

Last week, law enforcement deftly halted the smuggling of criminal contraband at an international airport, detaining former talk show host Montel Williams with a wooden marijuana pipe in Milwaukee. An empty one, that is.

Williams was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1999 and has since been a public supporter of the use of medical marijuana to relieve chronic pain. He was visiting Wisconsin to participate in an experimental brain treatment program for those suffering from MS, Parkinson’s disease and other brain afflictions when a TSA employee noticed the pipe and called for backup. He was detained by Milwaukee sheriffs while the pipe was examined and eventually determined not to contain marijuana residue. Williams paid a $400 fine and was released with a February 2 court date.

Tell Milwaukee County Sheriffs to drop the charges against Montel Williams!

Williams' arrest was a silly waste of time. But Milwaukee residents should consider the fiasco as merely the most public example of a troubling, wasteful epidemic of non-violent drug arrests in the city and the state—an epidemic that falls heavily on the backs of Wisconsin’s African-American population.

Wisconsin’s prison population has doubled in recent years due to the dramatic rise in the incarceration of minor drug offenders. In Milwaukee, the number of people locked up for such non-violent offenses grew tenfold between 1990 and 2004, and most of them were Black or Brown.

The state hit a new low in 2007 when it was named a national leader in the incarceration of minority youth and the state most likely to send Black juveniles to adult prisons. That same year, The Sentencing Project reported that Wisconsin locked up more of its Black residents than any other state in the nation. Today, African-Americans—6% of the state’s population—make up 45% of the state’s prison population.

When he took office in 2007, Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick seemed like someone who would stand up for the rights of immigrants. Indeed, former Governor Mitt Romney had recently signed an authorization for Massachusetts state troopers to detain undocumented immigrants and charge them with violating immigration law.  Governor Patrick rescinded it and immigrant communities breathed a sigh of relief.

Three years later, Governor Patrick has changed his stripes.  His administration announced late last week that it would sign an agreement with the federal government under the ironically-named Secure Communities initiative, which would require state law enforcement officers to run the fingerprints of all arrested persons against an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) database.

We need to tell Governor Patrick to think again.

The Secure Communities initiative is marketed as a way for the immigration enforcement agency to focus on removing the "right people," that is criminal immigrants.   The problem is, it doesn't actually work that way.   Instead, rights advocates criticize Secure Communities for destroying community confidence in law enforcement and increasing racial profiling. Worse, localities that implement Secure Communities see large numbers of non-criminal immigrants deported, ripping apart families.

The Governor of Massachusetts should know this. Secure Communities has been wreaking havoc on Boston-area families since 2006 when city police first joined the program. The program has resulted in hundreds of deportations, and according to an ACLU analysis of deportations since 2008, more than half of the deportations are of non-criminals. The real effect of Secure Communities has been to sweep up and deport hard-working immigrants for things like traffic violations.

Two weeks after a Somali-born teen was charged with terrorism for plotting to detonate what turned out to be a fake bomb supplied, built and issued to the suspect by the FBI, American Muslims are talking about what they believe to be a religiously-driven effort by the bureau to ferret out terrorism in their communities -- even if that means using informants and creating plots and scenarios out of thin air.

Indeed, as Lynne Jackson, founder of the Albany-based Project SALAM (Support and Legal Advocacy for Muslims), told Change.org last week that it feels "as though the FBI is playing off the same playbook, the same script," with its recent string of terrorism-related arrests based on information provided by undercover informants. Jackson and others will be sponsoring a public forum, "The Violation of Human Rights: The 'War on Terror' Continues at Home and Abroad," at Judson Memorial Church in New York City, on Dec. 10.

Meanwhile, the FBI's tactics are provoking a backlash on the opposite side of the country among activists and others in the Muslim community who say the FBI's tactics are alienating those whose help it needs the most.

While the international community focuses on the ongoing tension between the two Koreas, for many on this small peninsula, border tensions are the least of their worries - what truly concerns them is their next required health check and the HIV test that comes with it.

What happens to someone who tests positive? Does such a result lead to counseling and medication? Nope, it leads to immediate deportation to your native country.

Suffice it to say, South Korea is not the place to test positive.

Why all the furor and consternation about the government sanctioned group grope playing out in our nation's airports this Thanksgiving season?

Okay, I'll admit the prospect of having a blue uniformed minion of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) feeling me up - the so-called "enhanced pat-down" - isn't something I find appealing.  Still, it isn't an indignity that any of us has to put up with day in and day out.

If you are an African-American like me, however, and you happen to live in Philadelphia or in an ever growing list of US cities, having to possibly endure the humiliation of being singled-out, pulled aside and frisked is a daily concern.

Of course the uniformed authority behind these invasive and dehumanizing body pat-down security screens isn't the TSA but local police. Worse yet, this type of civil rights violating affront is not confined to just the airport, where at least the reasoning behind the searches (to guard against terrorists) is clear and where everyone is subjected to basically the same treatment. No, the security screening measures I'm speaking of are being conducted on the streets of cities like Philadelphia.

Further, unlike the understandably disgruntled  folks who believe the airport invasion of privacy is an outrage, black folks in Philly don't have the option of opting out. If you're black or Latino and walking down a Philadelphia street, you're fair game.