By Devon Douglas-Bowers

The recent shootings in Orlando are, without a doubt, a terrorist attack. However, it is not the terrorism that so much of the mainstream media is playing into, with their focus being on shooter Omar Mateen’s alleged pledge of allegiance to ISIS. Rather, it is terrorism against the LGBT community, especially Latinx LGBT people, and, due to the backlash from the far right and politicians who want to focus on Mateen’s religion, Muslim LGBT people. We need to understand and realize that this shooting goes much deeper than just terrorism and touches on a number of aspects of American culture itself.

Despite the victory of same sex marriage, there is still a large amount of bigotry against the LGBT community. One only need to look at the large number of states which have passed laws that protect “state officials, faith leaders, and religious organizations who act on their beliefs that marriage is between a man and a woman, that sex is only acceptable between husband and wife, and that gender is established at birth.”[1] This is done under the guise of ‘religious liberty,’ in which it is argued that someone is just practicing their faith when discriminating against LGBT people, yet actually inverts the entire situation by promoting the idea that “Christians who object to homosexuality on biblical grounds [are] victims of religious persecution.”[2] Add to this the recent ongoing hysteria involving transgender people using the bathrooms of their gender identity.

The situation which hadn’t been a problem before, suddenly exploded into the mainstream when the North Carolina legislature passed a bill which “[struck] down all existing LGBT nondiscrimination statutes across the state, on top of banning transgender people from using some public restrooms.”[3] The arguments became so controversial that the White House stepped in and made clear that, with regards to public schools, transgender children can use the bathroom of the gender they identify with.[4] In response, states have sued the Obama administration[5] and/or have voted to ignore the directive.[6] Unfortunately, these bathroom laws have had a very real effect on transgender people, with calls to the transgender suicide hotline Trans Lifeline doubling after the passing of the North Carolina bill.[7] Thus, we see that there is a general atmosphere across that nation that is hostile to people in the LGBT community.

It should be noted that Mateen attacked Pulse during its Latin Night[8] and it has been reported that “a co-worker recalled him as a virulent racist.”[9] It is quite obvious that there is an atmosphere against Latinos in the US, with everything from presidential candidate Donald Trump saying that he was going to build a wall to keep Mexicans out[10] and that Mexicans were all rapists and criminals[11] to the old and tired argument that immigrants (specifically Mexicans) were stealing jobs from people, the anti-Latino sentiment in the US is alive and intensifying, and has been for quite some time. Mateen’s racism isn’t random, but rather a possible byproduct of the anti-Latina/o bigotry that has been being expressed more and more openly over the years.

It has also been noted that he was abusive toward his wife.[12] This is rather important to note as there is a connection between gun violence and domestic abuse[13]; in addition to there regularly being an undercurrent of misogyny in many shooting incidents, from George Zimmerman who was arrested for domestic violence[14] to Ismaaiyl Abdulah Brinsley who shot his ex-girlfriend before going on to kill two NYPD officers[15] to the UCLA shooter who killed his estranged wife in Minnesota before driving to UCLA to shoot a professor.[16] Violence against women and gun violence are often linked together.

On a personal level, Mateen may have lived in a homophobic household as his father released a video the day after the shooting, where he said that “God will punish those involved in homosexuality.”[17] There is also the possibility that Mateen himself was gay or at least attracted to men. According to the Palm Beach Post, “One former classmate of Omar Mateen’s 2006 police academy class told The Palm Beach Post that he believed Mateen was gay, saying Mateen once tried to pick him up at a bar.”[18] Mateen frequented Pulse as well,[19] yet, due to both the homophobia at home and in society more generally, he may have not wanted to come out and may have internalized that shame, finally acting on it in the shooting.

The point of this isn’t to play armchair psychologist, but rather to acknowledge Omar Mateen’s views didn’t develop in a vacuum, they were caused by deeper cultural problems involving bigotry against the LGBT community, women, Latinos, and immigrants that are reflective of the larger American society.

In terms of the response to the shooting, there has been focus on terrorism and ISIS, gun control, and some arguing that the tragedy affected everyone, not just LGBT people.

Not soon after the tragedy, both presidential candidates Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton responded. Trump “[lambasted] the president and Clinton for not using the words ‘radical Islamic terrorism,’ seemed to advocate looser concealed carry laws, and repeated his call for a ‘temporary’ policy to ban Muslims from entering the U.S.” whereas Clinton said that she “supports the U.S. efforts to contain ISIS” and wants “tighter gun safety laws.”[20]

Where both Trump and Clinton agreed was that the US needed to bomb ISIS more, which The Intercept writer Zaid Jilani noted was a bit of a problem as “no operational links between ISIS and the alleged Orlando shooter, Omar Mateen, have been discovered” and “neither explained how escalating bombardments in Iraq and Syria would do anything to stop self-radicalized and/or unhinged attackers in the United States.”[21] Yet, the pro-military argument plays into the terrorism narrative that has been going on non-stop since 9/11 and possibly plays into the larger regional game the US has as it could be argued that ISIS needs to be stopped permanently and the only way to do that would be to send in ground forces, something that would let the US stay directly involved in both Iraq and Syria for quite some time.

There has also been much talk about gun control and how citizens shouldn’t be able to access assault weapons, with President Obama saying “Those who defend the easy accessibility of assault weapons should meet these families and explain why that makes sense.”[22] Even Republicans, it seems, may be open to changing the nation’s gun laws.[23]

Recently on the show Sky News Press Preview, host Mark Longhurst debated journalist Owen Jones (who is gay) on the causes of the attack, saying that “it was an attack on the ‘freedom of people trying to enjoy themselves’ on a night out” and co-guest Julia Hartley-Brewer told Jones “I don’t think you have ownership of the horror (sic), of this crime, because you’re gay.”[24] On the other side of the pond, former Senator Scott Brown stated that “It’s so tragic that you have people, and a lot of them were gay and lesbian and transgender, and that’s deeply unfortunate, but I think it’s more than that. They were Americans first.”[25] There was even an article in The Advocate entitled “There Were Straight Victims in Orlando Too.”[26] While it is important to acknowledge that there were straight victims, by focusing the spotlight on those victims, it ignores the fact that Mateen targeted Pulse specifically because it had LGBT people there. His thoughts weren’t about the straight people that, to him, just happened to be there, they were on harming and killing LGBT folk. Saying “there were straight people too” only serves to erase the nature of the crime and relegate LGBT people to the back rows.

What both the discussion of ISIS/terrorism as well as gun control laws does is shift the narrative of the shooting, turning it away from homophobia. This should be fought as rather than focusing on the tragedy of what happened and how to combat bigotry, the situation risks becoming another game of political football for politicians to use, using the dead bodies of LGBT people as their platform.

The purposeful ignoring of the shooting as a hate crime, either explicitly or implicitly, and acting as if was a crime against all people only serves to ignore the fact that Mateen targeted Pulse specifically because it had LGBT people there. His thoughts weren’t about the straight people that, to him, just happened to be there, they were on harming and killing LGBT folk. Saying “there were straight people too” or that “they were Americans first” only serves to erase the nature of the crime and relegate LGBT people to the back rows.

When confronting tragedy, there needs to be an examination of what exactly caused the situation, not only from a criminal perspective, but also a social and cultural perspective. These mass shootings occur in a modern context where race, sexual orientation, gender identity, and other factors intersect. To refuse to examine these intersections is a refusal to attempt to attain a fuller understanding of what occurred and why. It is a shame that people are obfuscating or ignoring the larger picture as it is extremely important.

It may save us from the next massacre.

Endnotes

[1] Molly Jackson, “How Southern States Are Now Challenging Gay Marriage,” Christian Science Monitor, February 20, 2016 (http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Society/2016/0220/How-Southern-states-are-now-challenging-gay-marriage)
[2] Southern Poverty Law Center, ‘Religious Liberty’ and the Anti-LGBT Right,https://www.splcenter.org/20160211/religious-liberty-and-anti-lgbt-right (February 11, 2016)
[3] Hannah Levintova, “North Carolina’s GOP Just Fast-Tracked The Broadest Anti-LGBT Bill In The Country,” Mother Jones, March 23, 2016 (http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/03/north-carolina-bill-lgbt-discrimination-law)
[4] Emanuella Grinberg, “Feds Issue Guidance On Transgender Access To School Bathrooms,” CNN, May 14, 2016 (http://www.cnn.com/2016/05/12/politics/transgender-bathrooms-obama-administration/)
[5] Theodore Schleifer, “Officials In 12 States To Sue Obama Administration Over Transgender Bathroom Directive,” CNN, May 27, 2016 (http://www.cnn.com/2016/05/25/politics/texas-lawsuit-barack-obama-transgender/)
[6] Emma Brown, “Kansas State Board of Education Votes to Ignore Obama’s Transgender Bathroom Directive,” Stars and Stripes, June 16, 2016 (http://www.stripes.com/news/us/kansas-state-board-of-education-votes-to-ignore-obama-s-transgender-bathroom-directive-1.414884)
[7] Samantha Allen, “After North Carolina’s Law, Trans Suicide Hotline Calls Double,” The Daily Beast, April 20, 2016 (http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/04/20/after-north-carolina-s-law-trans-suicide-hotline-calls-double.html)
[8] Yara Simón, “Worst Mass Shooting In Modern US History Takes Place at Orlando Gay Club on Latin-Themed Night,” Remezcla, June 12, 2016 (http://remezcla.com/culture/pulse-mass-shooting-latin-night/)
[9] Jenny Jarvie, Harriet Ryan, Del Quentin Wilber, ”Orlando Nightclub Gunman Remembered as Abusive, Homophobic, and Racist,” Los Angeles Times, June 12, 2016 (http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-orlando-nightclub-shooter-20160612-snap-story.html)
[10] Anna Brand, “Donald Trump: I Would Force Mexico to Build Border Wall,” MSNBC, June 28, 2015 (http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/donald-trump-i-would-force-mexico-build-border-wall)
[11] USA Today, Donald Trump: Mexico is Bringing Drugs, Crime, and Rapists to the US,http://www.usatoday.com/videos/news/2015/06/25/29292957/ (June 25, 2015)
[12] Claire Z. Cardona, “Orlando Shooter was ‘Mentally Unstable,’ Abusive, Ex-wife Says,” The Dallas Morning News, June 12, 2016 (http://crimeblog.dallasnews.com/2016/06/orlando-shooter-was-mentally-unstable-abusive-ex-wife-says.html/)
[13] Emily Crockett, “Why We Can’t Ignore the Connection between Gun Violence and Domestic Violence,” Vox, June 14, 2016 (http://www.vox.com/2016/6/14/11922576/orlando-shooting-omar-mateen-gun-domestic-violence)
[14] Ren Stutzman, “Girlfriend to Deputies: George Zimmerman Pointed A Shotgun at Me,”Orlando Sentinel, November 18, 2013 (http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/2013-11-18/news/os-george-zimmerman-arrested-20131118_1_george-zimmerman-murdering-17-year-old-trayvon-martin-deputies)
[15] Justin Fenton, “Police Say Killer of 2 NYPD Officers First Shot Ex-Girlfriend in Owings Mills,”The Baltimore Sun, December 20, 2014 (http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/bs-md-co-owings-mills-shooting-20141220-story.html)
[16] Julia Jacobo, “UCLA Shooter Killed Estranged Wife Before Campus Incident: Police,” ABC News, June 3, 2016 (http://abcnews.go.com/US/ucla-shooter-climbed-window-kill-estranged-wife-police/story?id=39597309)
[17] James Barrett, “5 Things You Need to Know About The Father of Orlando Jihadist Omar Mateen,” Daily Wire, June 13, 2016 (http://www.dailywire.com/news/6532/orlando-jihadists-father-god-will-punish-those-james-barrett)
[18] Lawrence Mower, “Orlando Shooter Omar Mateen was gay, Former Classmate Says,” Palm Beach Post, June 14, 2016 (http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/news/orlando-shooter-omar-mateen-was-gay-former-classma/nrfwW/)
[19] Paul Brinkmann, Gal Tziperman Lotan, Rene Stutzman, “Witness: Omar Mateen Had Been at Orlando nightclub Many Times,” Orlando Sentinel, June 13, 2016 (http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/pulse-orlando-nightclub-shooting/os-orlando-nightclub-omar-mateen-profile-20160613-story.html)
[20] Rebecca Shabad, “Orlando Attack Reactions from Clinton, Trump Are Starkly Different,” CBS News, June 14, 2016 (http://www.cbsnews.com/news/hillary-clinton-donald-trump-offer-starkly-different-reactions-to-orlando-attack/)
[21] Zaid Jilani, “Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton Call for Bombing ISIS After Orlando Shooting That ISIS Didn’t Direct,” The Intercept, June 13, 2016 (https://theintercept.com/2016/06/13/hillary-clinton-and-donald-trump-call-for-more-airstrikes-on-isis-after-orlando-massacre-that-isis-didnt-direct/)
[22] Robin Gradison, Alexander Mallin, “President Obama Rips Gun Control Opponents After Meeting with Orlando Victims’ Families,” ABC News, June 16, 2016 (http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/president-obama-visiting-families-victims-orlando/story?id=39885188)
[23] Ed O’Keefe, Karoun Demirjian, “In wake of Orlando shooting, gun control getting fresh look from GOP,” Washington Post, June 15, 2016 (https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/in-wake-of-orlando-shootings-gun-control-plans-getting-a-fresh-look-from-gop/2016/06/15/e25e3b2a-3311-11e6-8758-d58e76e11b12_story.html)
[24] Danny Boyle, “Owen Jones storms off Sky News paper review after presenter refuses to describe Orlando massacre as attack on gay people,” The Telegraph, June 13, 2016 (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/06/13/orlando-shooting-owen-jones-storms-off-sky-news-paper-review-aft/)
[25] Emily Atkin, “Scott Brown Says Orlando Shooting Did Not Primarily Target Gay People,” Think Progress, June 14, 2016 (http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2016/06/14/3788372/scott-brown-orlando-shooting/0
[26] Jacob Ogles, “There Were Straight Victims in Orlando Too,” The Advocate, June 13, 2016 (http://www.advocate.com/crime/2016/6/13/there-were-straight-victims-orlando-too)

Devon Bowers is an independent writer and researcher and is the Politics/Government Department Chair of the Hampton Institute. He can be contacted at devondb[at]mail[dot]com.

By Claire Bernish

Once thought to be too approachable for their own good — as in, able to efficaciously perform the tasks they’ve been designed to do — robots are now being programmed with self-defense capabilities.

Now, robots which, say, patrol for criminal or suspicious activity come with a blend of humanoid characteristics and self-defense programs which prevent them from being perceived as too cute — or too menacing.

“Because of all the doomsday scenarios people imagine with robots, their makers have to insert some cuteness,” explained Golden Krishna, a designer with Alphabet’s Google, as reported by theWall Street Journal.

“When humans see a robot that doesn’t have eyes,” said Rodolphe Gelin, SoftBank Group Corp. robotics unit chief scientific officer, “they think it doesn’t care about them.”

That perception — however Orwellian it might sound — can be detrimental to a robot’s ability to function on the job in the presence of humans.

After several failed design attempts to find the appropriate balance between relatable and threatening — and a number of incidents in which robots faced ‘abuse’ or ‘assault’ by humans — newer robots employ self-defense capabilities.

One incident of, well, ‘roboticide’ occurred with the failed experiment of HitchBOT. This cylindrical robot with an LED smile was dropped off on the roadside to see how if robots could “depend on people” — but the experiment came to an abrupt halt when HitchBOT “was found decapitated in Philadelphia last summer,” the WSJ noted.

“While the project showed that they can indeed trust humans,” HitchBOT’s creators said generally of robots, “there are also exceptions to the rule.”

Experts on the interaction between humans and their new mechanical counterparts observed “robot abuse” in action in Okinawa, Japan, in 2014, when robots designed to assist the elderly in purchasing groceries came under attack by children, who kicked it, beat it with a bottle and bent its neck.

“The robot said ‘Someone help me!’ and Ouch, that hurt,” said researcher, Dražen Bršcic, with ATR Intelligent Robotics and Communications Laboratories, as cited by the WSJ. “But it didn’t stop the children.”

Those experiments led, in part, to robots with human-like facial features that can also employ defensive tactics if someone gets spooked or wishes to cause harm.

Instead of reacting as if they’re being hurt, some newer robots have been designed to simply stop moving altogether — in theory, to cause attackers to lose interest. Thus, the K5 — a robot who performs all the functions of security patrols except offense — was born.

The WSJ described the K5:

The camera ended up at nose position. A row of ultrasonic sensors, to help it avoid running into people, looks like buttons. A navigation laser resembles a hat. Curved lights are eye-like.

The K5 patrols with buddy bots. If someone messes with one, its partner can document the offense. The K5’s shape and 300 pounds offer protection: The lack of edges make it hard for bad guys to lift and steal. Knightscope rents a K5 for $7 and hour or about $60,000 a year.

This 5-foot, 3-inch, glossy-white, graffiti-resistant K5 now appears almost neutral and can interact with humans more readily than some previous designs — such as a robot resembling a small tank — but is built with the ‘play dead’ reflex if attacked.

Knightscope, the start-up responsible for the K5, sought to create a beat cop robot; and the company’s vice president of marketing and sales, Stacy Stephens — as a former Dallas police officer — has offered input for the project.

“When it comes to mischievous activities,” she said in the WSJ, “I know a bit about what people do.

While the world might not be quite ready for armed robots-on-patrol, it would be a question worth considering as designs improve and people become familiarized to their presence. Armed, unmanned aerial vehicles — drones — have been responsible for a highly-contentious number of deaths in conflicts around the world, and particularly, the Middle East.

Can armed, unmanned, non-aerial, ‘human-esque’ robots really be that far in our future?

Below is a video of the K5 in action.

Claire Bernish writes for TheFreeThoughtProject.com, where this article first appeared.

Op-Ed by Alex Hidell

The recent Tasering of then 17-year-old Bryce Masters by Missouri cop Timothy Runnels has sparked outrage in the community and around the world. Runnels improper use of the Taser caused Bryce’s heart to stop for eight minutes. A twenty-three second jolt of 50,000 watts ended his life for a short time resulting in irreparable brain damage. Runnels was sentenced to four years in prison for his act of brutality against a defenseless kid. While this may bring some closure to Bryce’s family, it leaves the civilized world left to re-open the debate over Taser’s safety and whether or not it has a place in our society.

The question of whether or not the Taser should be used by today’s police is a complex one. There are many questions which should be asked and answered before coming to a rational and final conclusion. My career in law enforcement lasted about a decade. I carried a Taser for six or seven of those years and used it maybe a dozen times. We had clear-cut training on when to use the Taser, when NOT to use it, and how to use it “safely.” That being said, I have been Tased twice in training and at least three times, inadvertently, in the field. My experiences show that when used properly, the vast majority of the time, the electric shock itself is relatively safe. The vast majority of the time that someone dies or suffers irreparable harm, the Taser is used improperly or under circumstances which dictate the Taser should not be used. All in all, the question remains. Seeing that police continue to abuse the Taser, turning to it first as a fast way to end a simple situation, and ignore fundamental Taser safety training, should we continue to allow their use?

Between 2001 and 2014, there were 634 cases of Taser-related deaths in this country. In 2001 only 1100 agencies used the Taser. By 2009, that number skyrocketed to over 14,000. Today, Taser is standard carry for virtually all agencies. For a non-lethal weapon, there seem to be a lot of deaths attached to it. Some of these cases involve people with medical conditions that adversely reacted to the Taser, some of these do not. Why these people died is irrelevant, they never should have. If the Taser is used every day, all over the country; and if even 1% have adverse reactions or suffer death, should we still support its use?

One of the more well-known examples of a Tasering gone wrong is the case of Danielle Maudsley, a twenty-year-old DUI suspect who was Tased while fleeing handcuffed from Florida Trooper Daniel Cole in 2011. Maudsley’s body locked up and she fell to the ground, hitting her head. Her head injury caused brain damage and put her in a vegetative state. The problem here isn’t the Taser itself, it is the circumstance under which the Taser was used. Here’s the biggest problem with this situation in particular. The Trooper did exactly what he was trained to do. A shot to the back of a running suspect is directly out of the Taser training handbook. He did what his agency policy and Florida law dictated. So where does the problem lie? The training? Taser Policy? The law? I suggest that since we have seen that police blatantly overstep their role in society and disregard public safety as well as law and department policy, Taser be removed from their repertoire of secondary weapons.

Police argue that the Taser is a tool that is used to end violent conflict before it starts. They would argue that the Taser is a safe alternative to other weapons, and in and of itself that is true. But we’ve seen that the problem with Taser goes beyond the device itself and that its improper use is widespread. Police agencies are faced with budget cuts every year, which cuts into training. This results in officers being sent out on the road with a four-hour Taser training course, not truly understanding the great responsibility which comes along with its carry. The Taser itself has shown to be an effective tool, but in the wrong hands it can be a deadly one. It is no longer a risk that we, as a civilized society, should not take any longer.

Sources:

• http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/timothy-runnels-bryce-masters-taser_us_57571f6de4b07823f95188c9
• http://politicalblindspot.com/florida-cop-tasers-cuffed-girl-now-shes-braindead/
• https://electronicvillage.blogspot.com/2009/05/taser-related-deaths-in-united-states.html
• https://democratic-afrosphere.blogspot.com/2009/11/e.html

Alex Hidell writes for Anonhq.com, where this article first appeared.

(activistpost.com)

After Omar Mateen’s attack in Orlando last week, Donald Trump revived a controversial proposal: racial profiling to prevent terrorism.

“I hate the concept of profiling, but we have to use common sense,” Mr. Trump said Sunday in an interview with CBS’ Face the Nation. “We’re not using common sense.”

The debate over racial profiling has long centered on striking a balance between national security and civil liberties. But sometimes lost in that debate is evidence that the practice is ineffective, or even counterproductive.

To proponents like Mr. Trump who cite Israel as a model, the value of clearly identifying threats – even if that forces officials to focus on a single race or ethnicity – is the beginning of common-sense security. But the limited data that exist suggests that a one-size-fits-all approach to terrorism actually misses many threats and can overload agencies with false alarms.

“For example, if fire alarms were going off constantly, fire departments couldn’t respond to real fires as they should. That’s why it’s a crime to ring an alarm without a fire,” says Michael German, a former Federal Bureau of Investigation agent and current fellow with New York University School of Law’s Brennan Center for Justice. “The idea that there is one particular race or religion that drives this political violence is not supported by the evidence.”

Between 2001 and 2016, roughly two-thirds of 508 extremists who engaged in violent attacks – such as mass shootings – identified with jihadist terrorism, according to extensive data compiled by the New America Foundation.

Only eight were illegal residents, compared to 150 United States-born citizens. Sixty-seven identified as Arab or Middle Eastern, but significant numbers come from other backgrounds, including 49 Somalis, 48, South Asians, 35 Caucasians, and 35 African-Americans. There were also Hispanics, Albanians, a Uighur, and others.

Of the 10 violent jihadist attacks on US soil since 9/11, such as the Fort Hood shooting, none of them have been committed by a foreign terrorist organization.

William Press, a statistician at the University of Texas, found that profilingwas not mathematically justified. Even under a hypothetical all-knowing government, he says, the profiling system would sample innocent individuals who happen to have a high-risk value while ignoring “malfeasors” who learn to adjust their behavior.

“It is not only wrong and unconstitutional, but it is also at odds with reality,” says Hugh Handeyside, a staff attorney with American Civil Liberties Union’s National Security Project. “The science regarding who carries out terrorist attacks has yielded no distinct model to predict who will carry out terrorist attacks.”

The law on racial profiling

After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, President George W. Bush and Attorney General John Ashcroft outlawed profiling in law enforcement, because they deemed it as contrary to the nation’s founding principle of “liberty and justice for all.”

In 2014, the US Department of Justice expanded its restrictions on profiling to cover gender, national origin, religion, and sexual orientation, as well as race and ethnicity. But federal employees, such as FBI agents and those working for the Department of Homeland Security, are permitted to profile individuals within “the vicinity of the border.” In addition, 30 statesexplicitly forbid racial profiling, according to the NAACP.

Proponents argue, however, that racial profiling is an unfortunate necessity in today’s world of terrorism. Conservative political commentator Michelle Malkin cites the case of Phoenix FBI agent Kenneth Williams, who asked his superiors in the summer of 2001 to investigate Muslim men training at American flight schools. His request was denied, based partly on concerns of profiling.

“If the FBI had taken Williams’ advice, the feeling of some Arabs and Muslims might have been hurt. But the Twin Towers might still be standing and 3,000 innocent people might be alive today,” Malkin wrote in an op-ed for USA Today. “It is unfortunate that loyal Muslims or Arabs might be burdened because of terrorists who share their race, nationality, or religion. But any inconvenience is preferable to suffering a second mass terrorist attack on American soil.”

Israel's model: effective or counterproductive?

In his interview Sunday, Trump used Israel as an example of the effectiveness of racial profiling. Travelers passing through Israel’s Ben Gurion airport are subjected to different levels of screening based on characteristics such as skin color or language. Arab citizens of Israel are routinely subject to lengthy and often humiliating searches.

While this may sound unthinkable by US terms, there have been no successful terrorist attacks at Israeli airports since 1972.

Adm. Ami Ayalon, former director of Israel’s Shin Bet – the country’s domestic security agency – says Israel’s use of racial profiling today is counterproductive.

“Just because it is safe today, doesn’t mean it will be safe tomorrow,” says Admiral Ayalon. “In the long run, we create the next wave of violence as a result of what we doing now to secure ourselves.”

“When we are trying to achieve better security by using profiling, in a way we are getting the opposite impact or result,” he says. “Nobody can say whether the terror in our streets was not the result of the engagement or humiliation that they felt in our airports. It was easier to respond in the streets, but the hatred was created in the airports.”

The right red flags

Israel’s last airport security debacle, more than four decades ago, is an example of racial profiling gone wrong. Because officials were looking for Palestinian attackers, they didn’t stop the three Japanese shooters recruited by Palestinian militants who arrived at the airport with guns and grenades and killed 26.

And while Trump said Mr. Mateen, the Orlando shooter, raised a lot of red flags, it’s not clear a profiling effort would have caught them.

“A potentially gay Muslim. What profile does that fit?” asks Saif Inam, a policy analyst at the Muslim Public Affairs Council, who says the American Muslim community is one of the most diverse Muslim communities in the world. “Either everyone is going to be a suspect or no one is going to be a suspect. Either way you are not going to keep the community safe.”

Building relationships with community members is a more effective way of preventing hate crimes, mass violence, and terrorism, says Ranjana Natarajan, director of the Civil Rights Clinic at the University of Texas School of Law. “But if agencies are profiling people instead of engaging with them,” she says, “that undermines any attempt of relationship building.”