Profiling

The next time some racist tells you that racial profiling is legitimate, tell them they're full of shit.

Three college students from the prosperous suburbs south of Birmingham, two of them 19 and one 20, were arrested today in the burning of nine Baptist churches in rural Alabama last month that federal officials say was a prank that spun out of control.

Benjamin N. Moseley and Russell L. DeBusk Jr., both 19 and students at Birmingham Southern College, were arrested after admitting their involvement in the fires to federal agents who had been led to them by tire tracks left behind at several of the burned churches, officials said.

Arrested a few hours later was Matthew Lee Cloyd, 20, a student at the nearby University of Alabama-Birmingham whose mother was the owner of the 2000 Toyota 4Runner that had left the tracks, federal agents said in an affidavit accompanying the criminal complaint against the three men.

The identities of the accused came as a surprise to investigators, who had speculated that the arsons were the work of people intimately familiar with the remote rural roads where the fires were set, not products of Birmingham's upper-middle class, one the son of a doctor and another of a county constable.

"This is just so hard to believe," said Alabama Fire Marshal Richard Montgomery. "My profile on these suspects is shot all to heck and back."

Yes, the article has nothing to do with racial profiling. It has to do with the prejudice inherent in any form of profiling. Good old Dick Montgomery just can't wrap his peabrain around the idea that three spoiled white boys would go around burning churches. Assuming criminality based on race is the product of similar ignorance, multiplied by one hundred.

The best part of the story is that the punks got caught because the doctor's son had special tires on the 4Runner registered in mommy's name.

Oh, and the little punks are Junior Dick Cheneys too: "[DeBusk] said the three had been out shooting deer in Mr. Cloyd's S.U.V. prior to the fires." They are the NRA!