Imagine this, a child and his mother walk into a sporting goods store on a late Saturday afternoon. They are looking for nothing more than a new baseball glove that could be used for years to come. The son has been playing the sport he loves for over eight years now and his mother has supported him the entire way through. As the average looking, middle class family walks in they are greeted by two employees, nothing out of the norm, but what happens next is a little less than normal. Aisle by aisle they are followed with attentive eyes by the same two employees. The mother and son notice this trend and decide to split up. Sure enough, the two employees split up as well keeping close tabs on each potential “customer.” Meanwhile, that very same store is being robbed by white teenagers, who take at least two thousand dollars worth of name brand golf clubs. Seemingly improbable? Well, I can assure you it’s not because the son in that story was me. My mother and I weren’t as angry as you might think. It’s something that as a black family in a predominately white community you learn to live with. As sad as that is it’s also very true and happens more often than not. This instance of profiling just led to an ironic outcome. The biggest problem I had with what happened was the profiling done against an innocent black family while an actual crime was in progress. According to Douglas, criminal profiling or CP as defined in the article The Criminal Profiling Illusion: What’s Behind the Smoke and Mirrors is “the practice of predicting a criminal’s personality, behavioral and demographic characteristics based on crime scene evidence.” (1257). This applied repetition of profiling is used by police, FBI, and as I have noticed, store personnel. However Snook states “there is no scientific evidence that is reliable, valid, or useful when trying to support this method or tactic.” (1257). The illusion that follows criminal profiling as well as alternative solutions to the problem will highlight reasons for why criminal profiling should never be used. Even though no there are not specific techniques for making a criminal profile prediction, there are three stages as explained by Hicks and Sales (1258). “Police officers accumulate crime scene data along with the appropriate evidence, which is then sent to an experienced profiler who makes predictions about the personality, behavioral, and demog