Bush Administration Demotes Racial Stats Man

According to the Times, Lawrence Greenfield, the man selected by the Bush administration to head the Bureau of Statistics for the Justice Department, was demoted after he openly expressed frusteration with the administration's refusal to acknowledge statistics that showed that minorities were receiving significantly inferior treatment from the police than whites. Bob Herbert's column is available here, via Ablogistan.

Although a "cover up scheme" is only one of the thousands of reasons that Greenfield could have been demoted, it is, with all probability, the most likely. It's important that reporters get the president or the justice department to answer to the issue, as stories such as these only exacerbate relations between the police and the black and hispanic communities.