STATE PATROL IS FOCUS OF RACIAL PROFILE LEGISLATION

The Minnesota State Patrol would be required to collect and report
data on the race of motorists pulled over in routine traffic stops
under a bill approved Tuesday by a Senate committee.

But local police and sheriff's departments would not have to take part
in a state study of ``racial profiling'' by police officers.

An amendment added to the bill by Sen. Randy Kelly, DFL-St. Paul, also
would appropriate $5 million to outfit police squad cars across the
state with video cameras to record arrests.

``I hope this is something that people view as meaningful,'' said Sen.
Jane Ranum, DFL-Minneapolis, the bill's chief Senate author.

``Cameras will deal with police brutality,'' Ranum said. ``Will they
deal with racial profiling? Maybe not.''

Police departments in St. Paul and Minneapolis already are collecting
data on how often, and for what reasons, their officers stop, question
and arrest minorities.

Nathaniel Khaliq, president of the St. Paul branch of the National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said the bill
passed Tuesday by the Senate Transportation Finance Committee was a
compromise that minority groups perhaps could accept as a ``first
step'' toward ending profiling.

Public Safety Commissioner Charlie Weaver argued against requiring the
State Patrol to collect racial data, saying it would require 23,000
hours of work a year.

The bill approved Tuesday now goes to the Senate Finance Committee,
where some lawmakers may try to exempt the State Patrol from the data
collection. A House bill requires no mandatory data collection.

Senate Minority Leader Dick Day, R-Owatonna, tried to eliminate the
reporting requirement for the State Patrol. He and Khaliq engaged in
an angry exchange at one point in the committee hearing Tuesday.

``I wish some of these people would do more work in their communities
on crime,'' Day said of witnesses, many of them African-Americans, who
had testified in favor of requiring police departments to collect
racial data.

Khaliq said he was ``insulted and appalled'' by Day's comments. ``In
the black community, we declared war on drugs and gangs before the
white establishment ever thought it was a problem,'' he said.