reasons for questioning her independent of race. They included the purchase of a one-way ticket from Los Angeles to Cleveland, a city known for drug trafficking; the authorities’ past experience of arresting several drug traffickers on this flight; her ticket purchase only 5 hours prior to departure from a travel agency that had sold tickets to drug traffickers in the past; and the name “Angel Chavez” appearing on the ticket. Because Travis had not been selected solely because of her race (in fact, the detective testified race was not an issue at all), the court found no equal protection violation.

In an interesting concurring opinion, one judge agreed with the result of the case but found this equal protection analysis flawed. Judge Alice M. Batchelder noted that officers need “no reason whatever to approach citizens for the purpose of engaging in consensual encounters.”58 Thus, she was mystified” that the majority would hold that while a consensual encounter with a nonminority individual requires no basis for suspecting that individual of wrongdoing, a consensual encounter with a member of
a minority race must be based on some articulable or particularized suspicion of a nonracial nature.59 She argued that because there is no constitutional right not to be encountered by police, there can be no equal protection violation in such consensual encounters.

It is important to note that like most claims of equal protection violations, the defendant in Travis relied on statistics to support her allegation. She presented numbers gathered from incident reports generated by the Airport Police Task Force. On the surface, the numbers seemed to support her claim. The appellate court pointed out, however, that the statistics used were misleading. The reports recorded only encounters that ended in arrest or were otherwise suspicious enough to merit a report. Not all consensual encounters at the airport were reported. Additionally, the statistics only related to task force encounters at the airport, not all police encounters at the airport. Many of the reports did not include the race of the person encountered. Finally, the reports used by the defendant focused on the race of airline passengers encountered at the airport on various routes; there was no information regarding the racial makeup of passengers traveling the particular route at issue. The lesson is clear for law enforcement. Statistics can be misleading. For this reason, all claims of racial profiling based on statistics must be closely examined.

LEGITIMATE USE OF RACE
An important question not addressed in cases discussed thus far is whether race ever can be a valid  consideration when conducting law enforcement activity.

Race can be a legitimate consideration for police officers. In the Travis60 opinion, the majority concluded that “race or ethnic background may become a legitimate consideration when investigators have information on this subject about a particular suspect.” 61 Clearly, this consideration is not only constitutional but efficient and logical as well. A recent U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals case is illustrative.

In Brown v. City of Oneonta,62 a 77-year-old woman was attacked near Oneonta, New York. The victim reported to the New York State Police that her assailant was a young black male and that he had cut his hand with his knife during the attack. A police canine unit tracked the assailant’s scent from the scene of the crime toward the nearby campus of the State University of New York College at Oneonta (“SUCO”). Only 2 percent of the SUCO students were black. Based on this information, the police contacted SUCO and obtained a list of all black male students. They then attempted to locate and question every black male student at SUCO. When this effort produced no suspects, the police conducted a “sweep” of Oneonta. They questioned nonwhite persons on the streets and inspected their hands for cuts. Several people questioned, as well as those on the SUCO list, brought a civil action against various police departments, individual officers, and others. Their claims for damages included allegations that their rights under both the