Perfectly brilliant law enforcement

[Captrek]

ODO: What seems to be the problem?
LWAXANA: Well, my brooch has been stolen. It's been in my family for thirty six generations. It's absolutely priceless, and I want it back.
ODO: You're certain you were wearing it today.
LWAXANA: Yes, of course, I'm certain. I never use this hair without it.
ODO: I see. You're Betazoid?
LWAXANA: Of course.
ODO: Telepathic.
LWAXANA: Yes.
ODO: And you sense no guilt anywhere in this room?
LWAXANA: (closing her eyes for a quick scan) No, but Betazoids cannot read Ferengis.
ODO: Quark has plenty of reason to feel guilty, but he usually doesn't have to resort to petty theft to fleece his clients.
QUARK: Thank you.
(Odo looks around and spots a little alien in a corner, who tries to scuttle away. Odo stops him.)
ODO: Wait a minute. Empty your pockets now.
(He's been a busy little pick-pocket)
ODO: Well, since when did you join Starfleet?
LWAXANA: That's it. That's my brooch. But how did you know?
ODO: Dopterians are distant relatives of the Ferengi. It made sense that if you couldn't read Quark, you might not be able to read this charming fellow either.
LWAXANA: How perfectly brilliant of you.
(Odo leaves with the prisoner)

It’s 1993. The writers want to show an example of Odo being brilliant and effective at his job. And they come up with… racial profiling? Without even acknowledging the problematic implications?

Is it just me, or is this pretty messed up?

Come to think of it, acknowledging the problematic implications could have made for an interesting subplot. Imagine, there are several Dopterians in the bar, the guilty one is the third or fourth one Odo searches, and the rest go complaining to Sisko. It could’ve been a much better story than Julian and the ambASSadors.

 

[Ragitsu]

Aliens =/= humans.

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

The options here are a) nobody here is guilty b) nobody is guilty, period (she dropped it somewhere) c) her intuition is malfunctioning , d) someone she can't get a read on is guilty, or e) she's lying, either about losing it or about sensing guilt from anyone.

 

[Captrek]

I'm going to assume that most of us agree that "Julian hosts obnoxious ambassadors who have zero tact and are nothing but pests until circumstances conspire to make him a hero and they respect him" is, to put it charitably, not one of DS9's stronger stories and is disposable. That gives us time for another subplot.

Imagine the situation I suggested: there are a bunch of Dopterians in the bar, the guilty one is the third or fourth one Odo searches, and the rest complain to Sisko. I'm not going to sketch out how the subplot goes from there, I'm asking what you think — if that situation occurred, how would the story go from there?

 

[Tosk]

Odo doesn't really care about your petty objections. He caught the cuplrit, and harrumphs at any suggestion that he went about finding them 'the wrong way'.

 

[Detached Nacelle]

Been a while since I've seen the episode but looking at the transcript there you have a species immune to telepathy sheepishly trying to scuttle away when a policeman is investigating a theft. Suspicious behaviour if you ask me. If he'd just calmly continued having a drink at the bar not drawing any attention to himself and was then just grabbed that would be different but innocent people don't flee at just the sight of law enforcement.

 

[Captrek]

Been a while since I've seen the episode but looking at the transcript there you have a species immune to telepathy sheepishly trying to scuttle away when a policeman is investigating a theft. Suspicious behaviour if you ask me. If he'd just calmly continued having a drink at the bar not drawing any attention to himself and was then just grabbed that would be different but innocent people don't flee at just the sight of law enforcement.

I'm going with Odo's own explanation and what the writers put on the page. Odo doesn't say anything about suspicious behavior. He says he stopped the Dopterian because he's Dopterian, period. And I disagree that innocent people don't flee from law enforcement, especially when that law enforcement was trained by Cardassians.

Odo doesn't really care about your petty objections. He caught the cuplrit, and harrumphs at any suggestion that he went about finding them 'the wrong way'.

Absolutely. It's the kind of thing that presumably would have been standard operating procedure on Terok Nor. If it happens on DS9 and Sisko gets complaints, how does the story go from there?