POLICE BEGIN STUDY OF RACIAL PROFILING

In a statewide effort to determine if race plays a role in traffic stops,
police will now fill out a data card for every motorist pulled over.

Police across Rhode Island yesterday began collecting information for a
study intended to show whether some of them are stopping motorists because
of their race.

But if things go as smoothly as they seemed to be going, only the officers
will notice the beginning of this study of one of the most controversial
civil rights issues in recent years, which will gather data about hundreds
of thousands of traffic stops all across the state.

That's because, although the study is intended to record information every
time an officer pulls a driver over, the data collection is intended to be
invisible to the motorist.

Police at several departments said that as far as they could tell, the
program started off smoothly.

" Everything is proceeding as we expected, " said East Providence Chief
Gary L. Dias, whose officers had started filling out the cards the previous
midnight. " There's really been no impact on anyone, " except the officers
filling out the cards, Dias said.

Racial profiling has for years been a key issue for Rhode Island civil
rights groups, who say that police regularly stop motorists because of
their skin color, not their driving.

Minority group members have made a bitter joke of it, saying they are
stopped for " driving while black " or " driving with the wrong skin on. "
Police generally deny the accusations, but have agreed to participate in
the study.

The number of cars Rhode Island police stop each year isn't known, but
officials in the office of Atty . Gen . Sheldon Whitehouse, who is running
the study, said their best guess was 300,000 stops per year. The study is
to take two years.

Whitehouse spokesman Jim Martin said yesterday that a large shipment of the
data collection cards came in last Thursday, and were distributed to the
police departments.

" All departments, to my knowledge, have the cards and are up and running
today, " Martin said. " I'm not aware of any problems. "

State Police Capt. Leo Messier said that yesterday "wasn't the best of days
to start it -- we had a million accidents." But he said the state police
have started their part of the study on time, and that they will begin
getting in-service training on it starting today.

In Providence, Maj. Dennis W. Simoneau, commander of the Police
Department's patrol division, said the department started distributing the
cards and explanatory material to officers the night before.

"We've already made several stops and we're filling out the forms,"
Simoneau said. "It's working as planned."

Simoneau explained how Providence has handled one of the key elements of
the study, breaking the city down geographically to add detail to the data.
That will help the analysts account for differences in the statistics from
one part of the city, and state, to another.

One difficulty in trying to detect racial profiling is deciding what to
compare the number of minority group members stopped with -- the racial
breakdown of the city? The state? Or what?

The Providence Police Department had already divided the city into 29
"posts," or beats, with patrol cars assigned by post, so when officers fill
out the study cards, they'll include that location.

That, Simoneau said, will let the consultants from Northeastern University,
who are doing the analysis for Whitehouse, interpret the data. For example,
he said, one post includes Olneyville, with a substantial Hispanic
population, while another includes South Providence, with a substantial
black population. The cars stopped would likely reflect those population
differences.

Simoneau said he expects that the study will show that racial profiling
doesn't happen in Providence. He said he suspects that "it's an interstate
highway issue, not an inner-city issue," and that it grows out of drug
interdiction campaigns rather than routine local law enforcement.

So far nationally, the biggest controversies have involved the state police
in other states, particularly New Jersey and Maryland.

Digital Extra:

View the card that the police in Rhode Island will use as part of the
racial-profiling study now under way:

http://projo.com/cgi-bin/include.pl/news/profile.htm