I would rather have a police force I could respect, and be in slightly more danger (slightly, since the threat of a terrorist attack is in most situations, extremely slight) than have a police force that considers being brown sufficient evidence of guilt. You say that was not the situation, that’s fine, Mr. Hesse can still be forgiven for erring on the side of caution.

And I’m going to ignore the circular logic bit. I will say that I’ve met republicans who have a good sense of justice, which is all that is required to say racial profiling is wrong. Granted, I’ve only met about 4 of them, but there are probably more out there.

That’s precisely my point — the police acted with due diligence by checking into the nature of what it was that these people had in their backpacks. I don’t know about you, but if I saw someone running around in public with wiring protruding from their clothes, I’d sure as heck would hope the police would take the threat seriously by looking into it. In an era in which terrorists attempt and blow up buildings and people by hiding bombs underneath their clothes, it’s completely irresponsible to hide behind the excuse of “these people are different” as a reason not to act with due diligence for the public good.

Perhaps Mr. Hesse is a Republican, but I bet he is not because Republicans aren’t always trying to cast aspersions on the police and the very important job they do.

Suggesting that cops need to clean up their act is not irresponsible. The criticism may have been misapplied, if there were wires sticking out of their backpacks and there was good reason to believe it was a bomb, then that was decent police work. Doesn’t excuse racial profiling, or in general how cops treat everyone who is under 30, non-white, and/or not well to do.

At any rate, stop blaming the left for that, for all you know, Michael Hesse could be a lifelong republican and KKK member.