BANNING RACIAL PROFILING ISN'T ENOUGH, ACLU SAYS

A ban on racial profiling won't stop the more subtle kinds of racial
discrimination, the American Civil Liberties Union said Wednesday.

Wednesday, a bill moved through a City Council committee to ban racial
profiling by all police agencies, even private police.

The ACLU urged aldermen to require law enforcement officers to fill out and
maintain "contact cards," records of the perceived race of a person
stopped, and to ban "pretext stops."

Pretext stops happen when police unfairly target minorities for nitpicking
violations for which whites ordinarily would not be stopped--such as
drinking a beer on the street or driving 1 mph to 5 mph above the speed
limit. The real purpose is to pursue other, more serious crimes, ACLU legal
director Harvey Grossman said.

"An aggressive officer who wants to seize drugs can target minority youth
in this city time after time, do pat-downs time after time, find no guns,
find no drugs, and tell the young man to get on his way, and that will be
an unreported, unreviewed contact," he said.

"We urge you: Broaden the agenda. Let's have an open dialogue. What powers
are we giving to our police officers? What are the limitations on that
power? And most importantly, what are we doing to review the exercise of
the broadest and most powerful discretion that we grant any agent of
government: the power to stop and interrogate people."

Ald. Edward M. Burke (14th), a former Chicago police officer who introduced
the racial profiling ordinance, said he has an "open mind" about
strengthening the legislation at a later date. His co-sponsor, Police
Committee Chairman William Beavers (7th), said he views pretext stops as
the price paid for the war on drugs, even though his own grandson was a
target, simply for having a cell phone.

"They stopped him because the drug dealer on the block has a cell phone. .
. . I understand why they stopped him. The guy next door was selling drugs,
and they were looking for the guy next door. He owns a cell phone. He was
not a drug dealer. So, you're going to have some people that are going to
be stopped," Beavers said.

He also rejected Grossman's plea to return to the days when race was
recorded by police officers.

"We used to put race on tickets. It became offensive. We took it off. We've
been through that. We've not going back that way anymore," Beavers said.

Contact cards are discretionary--not mandatory--and the information can be
destroyed after 30 days. The ACLU wants to require the cards, keep them
indefinitely, and add the police officer's "perception" of a person's race
to the information retained.

"If you can't measure it, you can't manage it," Grossman said.

The proposed ordinance bars law enforcement officers from using "actual or
perceived race, ethnicity, gender, religion, disability, sexual
orientation, marital status, parental status, military discharge status,
financial status or lawful source of income as the sole factor" in
determining probable cause to stop, question or place someone in custody.