DRILLING A DRY HOLE

Just as men and women view relationships differently, so too are there
differences between how people of color and police officers see the touchy
issue of racial profiling.

For Hispanics and African-Americans, the idea that police officers might
assume criminal activity based on skin color is an insulting affront to
decency. They see racial profiling as an ugly throwback to a time in our
history when all-white police forces preyed upon non-whites with impunity.
To some, it may even be a way of putting middle- and upper-class Hispanics
and African-Americans in their place.

For the men -- and women -- in blue, accusations that officers would stop
and search black and brown motorists without probable cause, or even the
less stringent standard of "reasonable suspicion" -- are unfounded. Some
believe that the flap over racial profiling is much ado about nothing. They
see it as a paranoid fantasy based on the assumption that police forces --
nationally, still predominantly white -- are racist. And if law-abiding
citizens are harassed by these police? Well, a little inconvenience is the
price of good law enforcement.

That is the prevailing opinion at the Texas Department of Public Safety.
The agency patrols the roadways of a state where Hispanics make up 32
percent of the population and African-Americans account for another 11.3
percent -- and, according to department statistics, more than their share
are stopped and searched.

To its credit, the DPS stuck its neck out by volunteering a year ago to
begin collecting data on the hundreds of thousands of traffic stops,
searches and arrests the agency makes each year. But, to its shame, it
stuck its head in the sand when the findings began to roll in.

Last fall, The Dallas Morning News released the results of an audit of
895,000 tickets handed out by troopers in the previous year. The newspaper
compared the percentage of tickets issued, by race, to the racial breakdown
of the areas where the citations were issued. It found that in 26 rural
counties, black drivers were on ticket rolls in twice their percentages in
the population.

Denying any wrongdoing, the DPS dismissed the study as flawed because it
was not known what percentage of the drivers on the road at any given time
were African-American.

Besides, a department spokesperson said, most of the stops were probably
initiated when a radar gun caught speeders. In those cases, an officer
might not know the race of the motorist until the officer had approached
the vehicle. Fair enough. But what assumptions come into play once the
officer makes contact with the motorist and takes note of color?

It is more difficult for the DPS to dismiss the results of a second audit,
earlier this month, that examined search rates. Examining 491,000 traffic
tickets and 441,000 warning citations, the Morning News determined that the
DPS was more likely to search minority drivers than it was white ones.

With white motorists, troopers searched one in 50. With blacks, the figure
rose to one in 22. Hispanics were the most searchable, with one in 20
searched. Where only warnings were issued, the search rate for white
motorists dropped to one in 70. Curiously, the rates for blacks and
Hispanics stayed the same. That produced a new average -- minority drivers
were 3.5 times more likely to be searched than white drivers.

More troubling is what those searches turned up -- or didn't. The
department says that in the case of whites and blacks, about 10 percent of
searches hit pay dirt, turning up drugs, illegal weapons or other unlawful
material. In searches of Hispanics, however, the "hit rate" drops to 6.5
percent. While the DPS is, for whatever reason, searching Hispanics more
often than any other group, officers are getting less for the effort.

Why would the department continue to drill a dry hole? Why search Hispanics
more than twice as often as whites if the searches aren't paying off? And
doesn't the fact that they're not paying off disprove the very thing that
fueled them -- the troopers' assumption of criminal activity?

A DPS spokesperson explains that Hispanics are searched more often because
troopers are looking for drug dealers from Mexico and, logically, those bad
actors are probably going to be Hispanic.

Did I mention the part about Texas being one third Hispanic?

The Texas Department of Public Safety says that it is being picked on and
condemned without proof, that it is being branded guilty until proven
innocent because of an unfair assumption. It feels like a victim of
prejudice, of the tendency of some to expect the worst from those in a
certain group.

Don't you just hate that?