BLACK OFFICERS DISCUSS PROFILING, RACE ISSUES AT ANNUAL MEETING

MIAMI - The word 'yes' rumbled through the ballroom as a group of
about 300 black police officers were asked if they had personal
experience with racial profiling.

Afterward, Doris Byrd described an experience her son recently had
driving back to college. He was pulled over for not having his lights
on during a misty rain.

"The officer had a right to stop him, but the first thing he asked
when he stopped him was 'Do you have any drugs in the car?" said
Byrd, a sergeant with the Chicago Police Department and chairwoman of
the National Black Police Association.

She called it a case of "driving while black," an issue she said was
most important to her as the group holds its annual conference.

Officers will also be addressing discrimination issues that not only
involve how black officers are treated, but also how law enforcement
treats black communities.

"If the police officers are not getting equity in the workplace, how
are they going to dispense equity in the community?" said Dallas
Police Sgt. Preston Gilstrap, the association's southern regional
president.

Training sessions will help officers better work with minority
communities, said Ron Hampton, the group's executive director and a
former Washington D.C. police officer.

While some might assume that black officers already would be
sensitive to the policing needs of black communities, association
officials said officers are trained by institutions that often are
not.

Hampton said the conference gives officers a "twist" to traditional
training that helps them provide a more humanitarian service to their
communities.

"We want to make sure in the process of protecting our people, we are
not policing them," Hampton said. "We need to clean some of the dust
out of their heads from the police academy."

The group also pushes to make sure blacks have opportunities to work
and advance in law enforcement.

"There was a time when blacks couldn't be police officers, there was
a time when black officers couldn't arrest whites, there was a time
when black officers couldn't change their clothes at the station,
there was a time when black police officers couldn't ride in patrol
cars," said Hampton.

Progress has been made, but there is still a long way to go, he said,
noting that many departments serving large black communities have few
black officers or lack black officers in command positions.

Addressing the conference, Miami-Dade Police Assistant Director
Samuel Williams said officers should make sure they also learn from
each other.

"There's so much information and so much knowledge that sits in this
room alone," he said. "Take back from here the love, the wisdom, the
knowledge of this networking ... and bring it to your community."