A/74/274 health needs, where negative imagery – the stereotype of the mentally ill as mad, bad and dangerous – informs their treatment. 39 63. In the United Kingdom, the Metropolitan Police Service Gangs Matrix has been criticized and accused of disproportionality and discrimination, particularly against young black males. The review by the Mayor ’s Office for Policing and Crime indicates that the representation of young black males on the Matrix is disproportionate to their likelihood of criminality and victimization. 64. The media also plays a role in reinforcing racial stereotypes and desensitizing the public when the police kill people of African descent unjustly. Furthermore, the media often re-victimize victims of police brutality by digging for any of their past transgressions and posting the most unflattering photos they can find of the victims to send a subliminal message that “this life was worthless”. 65. There is clear evidence that racial profiling is endemic in the strategies and practices used by law enforcement around the world. Law enforcement targets, stigmatizes, stereotypes and profiles people of African descent on the basis of race. They are subjected to humiliating and often frightening detentions, interrogations and searches without evidence of criminal activity. The Working Group is aware of the negative impact of this strategy of policing, which has been proven many times over to be ineffective. It has led people of African descent to live in fear; it has cast black communities as suspect simply because of what they look like, where they come from or what religion they adhere to. 66. In the United States, black drivers are more likely to be stopped by police officers and three times more likely to be searched than white drivers. Newly released data from the Stanford Open Policing Project of Stanford University confirm the prevalence of racial profiling in law enforcement. Using data collected from over 100 million traffic stops across the United States between 2011 and 2017, the researchers found that black and Latino drivers were stopped at a disproportionate rate compared with white drivers, who are searched less often but are more likely to be found with contraband. 67. In 2013, United States Federal District Court Judge Shira Scheindlin ruled that the New York Police Department’s stop-and-frisk programme was unconstitutional because of its clear history of racial discrimination. Scheindlin also found that the Police Department had resorted to a policy of indirect racial profiling which led to officers’ routinely stopping black and Hispanic people who would not have been stopped if they were white. Scheindlin found that 83 percent of the stops between 2004 and 2012 involved black and Hispanic people, even though they made up just slightly more than 50 per cent of the city’s residents. 68. In Canada, a York University research team working on the Ottawa Police Service Traffic Stop Race Data Collection Project found that in Ottawa, black and Middle Eastern drivers, irrespective of their sex and age, had disproportionately high incidences of traffic stops. Black drivers were stopped 7,238 times, or about 8.8 per cent of total stops, over a two-year period, although they represented less than 4 per cent of the total driving population in Ottawa. 69. In a survey by the European Union Agency for Fundamental Human Rights, 40 one third of respondents (30 per cent) said they had experienced some form of racist harassment and one fifth (21 per cent) said they did so during 2018. Yet only 14 per cent of victims of racist harassment reported the most recent such incident to any __________________ 39 40 19-13272 Information provided by INQUEST. European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, Second European Union Minorities and Discrimination Survey: Being Black in the EU (Luxembourg, 2018). 17/22