Rhode Island - Small

I gotta get going and get into the lab today but I was just having my coffee and muffin and reading the local headlines. This one sort of grabbed me.
Racial profiling study shows nonwhites still searched more often August 8, 2005
AP
PROVIDENCE, R.I. --The latest round of data used for a racial profiling study of police departments in Rhode Island showed nonwhite drivers still were more than twice as likely to be searched as white drivers. But the statistics also showed white drivers were still more likely to be found with contraband.

Full news story here
ACLU report (basis of the story) here

I have mixed feelings about Rhode Island. For starters, I think there is a karmic issue there. The few times I've tried to go to Newport, something bad has occured. I am certain at this point that if I were to actually get there, I might find that I regret it. The last time I tried was the day I woke up with vertigo. I had big plans to go, I'd looked up the cliff walks and all that. We were going to do it. Then BLAM! Sick. I've not felt well since. I've decided to never make Newport plans ever ever again.

Historically, I've not like the state. Growing up on the South Shore of MA, I think I developed some kind of regional prejudice about RI - that it was populated largely by tacky, non-rich people who liked to act rich. I suspect this is entirely based on a series of TV ads for ONE travel agency that had numerous offices in RI. In the ads, a really annoying set of kids grinned and yelled at the camera about how fucking great their family's twice yearly vacations to disney world were. All of them had on Mickey ears. Suffering through far too many of these ads on the UHF station while my siblings and I watched our occasional cartoons afterschool (Spiderman, Star Blazers, Battle of the Planets), Saturday morning's Creature Double Feature, or any number of Sunday afteroon movies, resulted in a strong childhood aversion to RI. As an adult, I have to admit that the Crimson Travel Agency ads, as annoying and disturbing as they were, are not truly sufficient grounds for disliking an entire state and it's citizens.

However, with adulthood came layers of awareness that I didn't have as a child. For starters, when driving on Route 128 in MA, beware the RI plates. I don't know, too much salt water in the Ocean state maybe affects the brain. They don't do highway driving well. Further, there is a feeling of sleeze I get when I have driven through RI (usually it's through, once or twice it's been to and from but that was for T's family beach vacations and those have oh so many negative and/or painful associations). I don't know why exactly. The year round forest of lawn signs with slogans like "Balducci for Animal Control Officer" hint at strangely Machiavellian town and state workings.

Well something about RI has always bothered me a little. Honestly, it probably really is just some kind of indelible reaction to the damned gapped tooth exhuberant disney visiting kid in his mickey mouse ears. I'm sure there are some nice and not racist people in RI. They just aren't cops or cop bosses.

(BTW, amusing observation from talking to a cop in my new home town recently. I never realized how hard it is not to say "cop" and various other casual terms for officers of the law until I found myself in a position when I felt I should try not to)