RACIAL PROFILING

No drivers in North Carolina should have to worry that they'll be stopped
by a policeman solely because the color of their skin fits a potential
criminal's profile. A provision in the Senate's state budget will go a long
way toward stopping this kind of police abuse.

In 1999, Sen. Frank Ballance of Warrenton pushed legislation through the
General Assembly that mandates record-keeping of all Highway Patrol traffic
stops. The legislation aimed at stopping the practice of profiling black
drivers as potential lawbreakers.

The Highway Patrol, to its credit, agreed with the Ballance bill and, over
the past two years, demonstrated that there is no discernible racial
prejudice exercised in stops by its troopers. The patrol's data did not,
however, eliminate suspicions that other law enforcement agencies were
targeting black drivers for unwarranted stops.

Ballance's provision in this year's budget would expand the reporting
requirement to most law enforcement agencies in the state. Only the
smallest police departments will be relieved of the responsibility to
report every traffic stop and include the race of the drivers.

There are far more town and city police officers, far more sheriffs'
deputies, than highway patrolmen. In the small towns and big cities of this
state, there is a far greater chance of racial abuse than there is with the
Highway Patrol.

There is no way to tell whether the data collected by the patrol reflected
the situation that existed before Ballance's bill became law. The patrol
insists that it never practiced racial profiling and that the law changed
only reporting practices, not law enforcement procedures. The data since
collected by the patrol, and analyzed by the Department of Justice, cleared
the patrol from suspicion, warranted or not, that it practices racial
profiling.

Expansion of the law to almost all law enforcement agencies will relieve
minority citizens of the fear that they'll be systematically targeted for
unwarranted stops. But there is another benefit of the law's expansion,
this one accruing to the state's many local police and sheriffs'
departments. The collection of such data offers the opportunity to all of
these agencies to demonstrate that they do not discriminate.

The worthiness of this proposal notwithstanding, Ballance's tactics in
getting the reporting requirement expanded are troubling. After initial
hearings in a committee, Ballance used his clout with the Democratic
leadership to roll his bill into the budget. Bundled with hundreds of pages
of budget items and provisions, this provision got no scrutiny on the
Senate floor.

Ballance's provision deserves to become law, but the House would do well to
remove it from the budget and debate it as the separate piece of
legislation that it is.