CHP SETTLES RACIAL PROFILING LAWSUIT

ACLU Hails Accord Over The Stopping Of A Latino Driver In A Drug Search.

SAN FRANCISCO -- The California Highway Patrol announced a series of
measures Thursday aimed at ending the use of racial profiling by its
officers, part of a settlement hailed as a major agreement by the American
Civil Liberties Union. The CHP agreement settles a 1999 federal
class-action lawsuit stemming from a CHP drug interdiction operation near
San Jose that stopped a car driven by a lawyer of Latino descent.

The CHP's settlement with the ACLU of Northern California, which brought
the suit, extends for three years an existing CHP moratorium on the use of
consent searches -- those where officers who have no evidence of criminal
activity ask drivers for permission to search their cars.

The agency also will clarify its policy that officers not use minor traffic
violations as a pretext to stop vehicles for drug-interdiction purposes
when there is no probable cause the occupants are engaged in drug trafficking.

Critics of racial profiling consider consent searches and "pretext stops"
as significant indicators that police are utilizing race as the lone basis
for suspecting drivers of involvement in drug or other criminal activity.

The CHP also will create the post of auditor, who will review data
detailing who is pulled over on traffic violations, the reasons for the
stop, the officers involved and the incidence of arrests.

The lawsuit's goal was to change CHP practices that encouraged a climate
whereby "race and racial stereotyping had become a proxy for criminal
activity," Alan Schlosser, legal director of the ACLU of Northern
California, said at a press conference.

"The fact that the CHP is endorsing and joining with us to institute these
changes gives us confidence that they are going to make a difference on the
highways and not just in the policy manuals," Schlosser added, calling the
settlement "a landmark."

However, CHP Commissioner D.O. "Spike" Helmick asserted the pact does not
go much beyond current policies. While praising ACLU efforts, he said the
extension of the current moratorium on consent searches, for example, would
have continued as long as he remains commissioner.

"Hell, I would have done that anyway," he said in an interview. "We simply
called it an out-of-court settlement" that avoids burdensome legal costs,
he added.

But Curtis Rodriguez, 44, the San Jose lawyer whose 1998 traffic stop by
CHP officers kicked off the lawsuit, said he was personally satisfied with
the accord.

"It was not my expectation that they would wave a magic wand and all racial
mistreatment or problems would disappear," Rodriguez said after the press
conference. "It's an important step."

The lawsuit highlighted three specific incidents, including Rodriguez's, in
which the ACLU contended that CHP officers pulled over drivers solely
because of their race. The drivers in the other two incidents, which
occurred near Los Banos, were African American and Latino. No arrests were
made and no contraband was found as a result of those stops.

Jon Streeter, a lawyer working with the ACLU, said research into more than
1 million traffic stops by CHP officers in the agency's central and coastal
divisions in 2000 and 2001 showed Latinos were pulled over three times as
often, and African Americans 1.5 times as often, as white drivers.

Streeter said law-enforcement agencies frequently contend that minorities
are pulled over more often because they are more involved in crime.

"We felt that looking at the actual evidence ... minorities are no more
likely to be carrying drugs than any ethnic group in our country," he said.
"This is the heart of the problem, the difference between the stereotype
and the actual fact."

The expanded traffic-stop data required by the settlement will be reviewed
by supervisors and ultimately by the CHP auditor, who will report directly
to the commissioner. Officers also are to get regular training on the
settlement's mandates.

The agreement requires the CHP to pay $875,000 -- $50,000 each to Rodriguez
and the other two named plaintiffs in the case and the remainder to help
defray legal expenses.

Schlosser praised Helmick and other top CHP officials for working on a
resolution, citing the commissioner's 2001 order barring consent searches
- -- though the CHP admitted no guilt in the settlement.

Helmick contended that his officers do not engage in racial profiling. But
he acknowledged the perception in ethnic communities that police often stop
vehicles because of the race of their drivers -- a view that has become
known as "driving while black."

Mark Schlosberg, an ACLU lawyer, said the accord could be used as a model
by other police agencies.

He noted that in cities such as Sacramento and San Francisco, traffic-stop
data have shown large disparities in the way ethnic minority drivers are
treated compared to white drivers.

A recent Sacramento Police Department report found that African American
drivers are stopped at nearly twice the rate of their portion of the
driving-age population.

Latinos are pulled over at a rate roughly matching their percentage of the
driving-age population, while Asian American and white drivers are stopped
at lower rates.