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Guest Opinion: Editorial used faulty analysis Sunday Feb 19, 2017 at 12:01 AM By Mary Coombs In Sunday’s Mail Tribune, there was an editorial titled “Profiling police doesn’t end well.” I would like to suggest that the editorial is based on a false analysis, quite apart from the question of whether Keely Meagan was posing a safety risk by parking her car where she did. The editorial assumed that there was no justification for Meagan's stopping to observe the traffic stop of a black motorist, since “there have been no reports locally of white officers shooting black people.” Statistics indicate that 75 unarmed black men were killed by police last year (one-third of all such killings, though blacks are only 13 percent of the population). Even if each killing was in a different jurisdiction, most police departments in the country didn’t kill any unarmed black men last year. Does that mean that the problem of police over-reaction at best and racism at worst does not exist except in a few places? Does that mean that black citizens, especially young black men, should only be concerned about what might happen to them in a police encounter in a few places? Or is this a systemic problem, in reality and (reasonable) perception throughout the country? And note that the issue is differential treatment based on the race of the civilian and the widespread police culture that tends to see black citizens as more dangerous than white citizens, to assume that a black man is reaching for a weapon, while assuming that a white man is reaching for his identification. And this is true for police of all races. Here in the Rogue Valley, we often like to think we are extraordinary. And we are in many ways. It may well be true that race relations here are better than in much of the rest of the country and that our local police are better trained and handle citizen-police interactions with more sensitivity and less machismo than elsewhere (that certainly describes my experience in moving from Miami to Ashland). But better than average is not the same as perfect, or even “as good as we could be and want to be.” People of color in the valley, based both on experiences here and elsewhere, may reasonably fear different treatment in interactions with the police and other public and private entities than they would receive if they were — like the vast majority of us — white. Finally, many white people here are concerned about making our fellow-citizens and visitors of color feel as safe and welcomed here as we do. So — hopefully without creating any safety problems — we will try to intervene, when appropriate, or witness, to communicate that commitment. This is not racial profiling. It is not the race of the police officer that matters, but the race of the citizen. And, so long as the statistics indicate that blacks are more at risk in such encounters it is that concern, not racial profiling, that drives us. — Mary Coombs of Ashland is a retired professor of law.