PROFILING ALLEGATIONS PUTTING NEW HEAT ON THE SAPD

For the second time in less than a year, the way San Antonio police treat
minorities -- whether it's the rate at which officers search
African-American drivers or the number of times they use force on Hispanics
and blacks -- has brought the department into sharp focus.

An analysis of nearly 290,000 newly released records of police stops shows
blacks were more than three times as likely as whites to face certain types
of police searches. Yet police found contraband in the searches at about the
same rate for both races, a finding that civil rights groups said shows the
disparate treatment was unwarranted.

Collected as a result of a state law that banned racial profiling last year,
the data is intended to document the treatment of minorities and bridge the
divide between the perceptions of minorities and law enforcement.

The San Antonio Express-News examined 12 months worth of traffic and
pedestrian stop records for 2002 and interviewed drivers whom police
stopped, civil rights leaders, profiling experts, patrol officers and police
administrators to look at one of the most potentially divisive issues facing
police and the communities they serve.

Police Chief Albert Ortiz cautioned against using the data to paint broad
strokes, but he didn't discount the possibility of isolated instances of
racial profiling.

"I doubt seriously if it's a systematic problem," he said. "To make a
generalization like that is damaging the fabric of this community because it
develops distrust."

For many officers, the very question insults what they believe are their
good-faith efforts to protect and serve.

The issue cuts to the core of one of the nation's oldest and rawest debates
and forces questions about whether police enforce the law fairly between the
races or whether police are merely responding to larger socioeconomic
patterns of who commits crime.

The data, obtained through an open records request, provides a panoramic
view rich with detail about whom police stop and why they search people, who
receives traffic tickets or warnings, whom police arrest and what type of
contraband police seize.

Among The Findings:

San Antonio police stop minority and white drivers at rates that are roughly
similar to their share of the population.

Most traffic stops lead to a ticket. Nearly three of four people who are
stopped receive a citation, while about 12 percent of all traffic stops end
with a written warning. Police issued traffic tickets to minorities and
whites at rates that are proportional to their census population. Police
made 214,803 traffic stops last year.

Police searches during traffic stops are rare, with fewer than 15 percent of
people searched.

A lopsided pattern emerges in searches where officers flex their discretion.
In instances where police suspect illegal activity but lack enough evidence
to conduct a probable cause search, officers must ask for consent to search.
Blacks are more than three times as likely to face such searches, encounters
that affected nearly 600 blacks last year. Other ethnicities are subjected
to consensual searches at about the same rate as their proportion of the
population.

African Americans also are more than three times as likely as whites to face
probable cause searches during traffic stops. Blacks also are more likely to
face consensual and probable cause searches during pedestrian stops.

"That sounds disproportionate to me," said Gary Bledsoe, state president of
the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. "When you
have numbers as high as those, it suggests that something else which is not
legitimate is motivating the searches."

On The Road

Just a scratch beneath the surface of the data, stories told by minorities
describe routine indignities. Some young males characterize being pulled
over as an inescapable rite of passage.

One local 15-year-old African American said he had been behind the wheel
less than a dozen times and still had a learner's permit when a squad car
started tailing him.

The stop came blocks later when he failed to signal while changing lanes.
When the officer discovered that his passenger was not old enough to
supervise his driving, the car was searched.

During the search, the officer joked about finding drugs, even though there
were none, he said. "I mean, it was my first experience with the law, and it
was bad."

Racial dynamics often add unspoken tension to police stops. Openly
confronted, it can be a flashpoint.

Kenneth Lewis, a 29-year-old black nursing student, was driving home on
Callaghan Road when he spotted the patrol car in his rear-view mirror. As
the policeman followed him, Lewis said, he took extra care not to speed, to
drive straight in his lane and use his blinker when he turned into the
parking lot for his apartment. But just as soon as he thought everything was
fine, the red lights starting flashing.

The officer asked for Lewis' driver's license, and Lewis asked why he was
stopped. The officer told him that the light bulb for his rear license plate
wasn't working. That's when Lewis challenged the officer's reason for the
stop.

"I told the officer that I thought he was stopping me for nothing, that he
was profiling me," Lewis said. "That's when he got mad."

Police declined a request to interview the officer, but Chief Ortiz reviewed
the ticket and said it appeared the officer had probable cause to stop the
car.

When the officer discovered Lewis had two unpaid traffic tickets, Lewis was
arrested and two other officers arrived and searched his car. They found no
contraband, but Lewis went to Bexar County Jail for the next 30 hours
because of the tickets. Lewis said the officer later told him that to prove
the stop was warranted, he needed to enforce every violation.

"The officer said that if he let me go, it would look like racial
profiling," Lewis said. "He said he couldn't take the chance."

Contraband, Complaints

Although blacks are more likely to face consensual searches, police found
contraband -- some type of evidence of a crime, stolen property or drugs --
at about the same rates for all three groups.

During traffic stops that led to probable cause searches, whites were
slightly more likely than blacks or Hispanics to have contraband.

And during all traffic stops -- regardless of the type of search -- police
found contraband on whites more often than blacks.

Chief Ortiz said a preliminary in-house report on the data, which listed
similar differences on the search rates between blacks and whites, flagged
the attention of police brass.

But like police officials across the state who were required to submit the
first reports on the data by March 1, Ortiz said it is too early to divine
the meaning of the statistics because no standard exists for comparing the
data.

Experts say the census does not provide a reliable benchmark because the
city's population may differ from demographics of drivers on the roads.
Tourists, for instance, are not captured in census data.

The department plans to hire an outside firm to produce a detailed analysis
based on field surveys recording the race of drivers. But that report is not
expected for another six months.

"That type of information is worthy of further analysis, and hopefully that
analysis will delve into the basis for those requests for searches and why
the people gave consent," Ortiz said. "That's something that would pique the
interest of professionals and that's why we're hoping they can tell us if
there's a problem."

A more faithful indication of bias is the number of complaints a department
receives, he said. Police received four complaints of racial profiling last
year, he said.

But civil rights leaders and minorities contend that when they complain to
the agencies about racial discrimination they face indifference or inaction.

"If I complain, they're not going to do anything," said Jorge Gonzalez, a
31-year-old maintenance worker who believes he was targeted when he received
a ticket in January for failing to use his signal when he changed lanes.

Some officers said the complaints are often unwarranted because it can be
difficult, if not impossible, to determine the race of drivers as they whiz
past them on the road, especially at night.

"Even without window tints, it's very hard to tell who's in the car," said
Rene Rodriguez, president of the police union.

In Gonzalez's case, he says the trouble is not so much his race, but the car
he drives: a 1987 maroon Chevy Monte Carlo low-rider with dark window tints,
shiny spoke rims and a bright-colored Mexican blanket thrown across the dash