SIGNS OF BIAS IN POLICE STOPS

Complaints of unwarranted police stops are common enough among
African-Americans to have inspired the cynical term "driving while black"
to describe the "offense" that arouses police suspicions. A recent study of
Illinois state troopers offers disturbing evidence of the reality behind
that grim joke.

The study, by the Illinois chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union,
shows that significantly higher percentages of blacks and Hispanics were
stopped and cited by the state police's "Valkyrie" drug interdiction unit
than the percentages that blacks and Hispanics constituted of the traveling
public.

Introduced as part of a five-year-old lawsuit against the Illinois State
Police, the ACLU study found that, between 1987 and 1997, while
African-Americans were only 10.3 percent of the motorists taking personal
vehicle trips, they were 22.7 percent of those stopped, searched and cited.

Hispanics fared even worse. While they took fewer than 3 percent of the
personal vehicle trips in Illinois, they were 21 percent of those stopped
and cited. Before the "Valkyrie" unit was formed in 1990, Hispanics made up
only 2 to 4 percent of motorists who had been stopped and issued citations.

Not known is the answer to a much larger question: How many minorities were
needlessly stopped without any citation being issued? In one year, for
example, "Valkyrie" officers stopped more than 28,000 vehicles and
conducted more than 5,000 searches, but race was recorded only for the
1,843 cases in which field reports were filed.

The ACLU wants racial data on all police highway stops. A bill proposed by
Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D.--Mich.) would require it nationwide. Similar
legislation passed the House last year, but died in the Senate. An Illinois
bill would require state and Chicago police to record the race of every
person to whom a warning or citation is issued. The ACLU suit goes further.
It asks that race be noted for all stops and searches regardless of whether
a citation is written or not.

Given what is already known about this problem, such a demand does not seem
out of order. When people are judged by their appearance as a matter of
official police policy, strict oversight is called for. According to the
ACLU study, drug-interdiction troopers actually found contraband in the
vehicles of a smaller percentage of Hispanic motorists than of white ones,
even though a higher percentage of Hispanics was stopped and cited. That's
the kind of anti-drug policy that angers and alienates the very citizens it
is supposed to protect.