I would agree its stupid, but in today's blame driven / cover your arse driven society I can understand why it is a consideration for the investigation teams when in "immediate response mode" to at least look down that avenue if only to dismiss the possibility at earliest opportunity: after all a proportion of joe public will leap to that conclusion anyway. Criminal profiling is something that isnt going to go away - like it or not.

Its not as extreme as in the US where stats show that (for example) the 13% afro american community are resonsible for over 50% of murders (source FBI data) hence the growth of criminal profiling there. Interestingly a similar proportion of murder victims are also afro american so it seems to be far more a community/lifestyle/poverty/gang related issue rather than overtly racist black on white crime.