Meeting of the Minds 2019

by Dave Dwyer

One of the most important action items I came away with was the importance of all motorcyclists who have been profiled going to the linkmotorcycleprofilingproject.com and answering the questions on their Profiling Survey. This form gives you space to recount up to five separate profiling incidents completely anonymously. There is only a little time left to take this survey as it is going to be shut down at the end of the year. The current reports show that independent riders are reporting a great deal more profiling than motorcycle club members. It is up to all of us to do what we can to stop this. On the landing page, simply click on the National Survey link at the top of the page. This will take you to the Survey page, click on the, Take the Survey Here button, and simply answer the questions. The more responses they get, the better they can help identify where the majority of profiling is taking place and get the help needed to those areas to help eliminate this scourge.

In 2019 two additional States, Louisiana and Arizona, passed anti-profiling legislation. I spent some time talking with the Leaders of the Motorcyclist Rights Organizations from those States. Without the help from the Motorcycle Profiling Project, (MPP) they would not have been able to get their bills passed. MPP was able to give them maps of their States that showed where and how often the profiling of Motorcyclist was taking place. The map we saw at MOTM showed a lot of profiling reports along the East side of Wisconsin and some of the major northern cities, places I tend to avoid.

If law enforcement is profiling Motorcyclists in your area the first step to fixing it is to use the MPP’s National Survey to report it. What is not documented will not be fixed. We are all in this together and need to work together to get this fixed.

On the Federal level the anti-profiling Resolution passed the Senate this year and the number of sponsors on H.R. Res. 255 is growing weekly, the count when I wrote this was 91. The only one we are missing from Wisconsin is Rep. Gwen Moore, who was on the Resolution last year. Rep. Duffy was also on the missing list, but he has resigned, and his seat is empty. That puts Wisconsin at 6 out of 7, one of the best in the country.