THE RACIAL ISSUE LOOMING IN THE REAR-VIEW MIRROR

Activists Seek Data On Police 'Profiling'

Kevin Murray is 39, a successful Los Angeles lawyer who drives a black
Corvette. One night last June, Murray was stopped by police in affluent
Beverly Hills.

Later, the officer would claim she had stopped him because his car lacked a
front license tag. But Murray said the officer never mentioned the front
tag when she pulled him over and did not issue him a traffic citation.
Murray concluded that he was stopped only because he is black.

That might have been the end of it except that Murray was also a member of
the California Assembly, and on the night he was stopped had just won the
Democratic primary for a seat in the state Senate, where he now serves.
Within weeks of the stop, he introduced legislation requiring California
law enforcement agencies to collect and make public records on the race,
ethnicity, gender and age of everyone they stop. The bill breezed through
the legislature, only to be vetoed by then-Gov. Pete Wilson (R).

But Murray is back with a similar bill this year and he is not alone. From
the Justice Department and Capitol Hill to Sacramento and other state
capitals, there is a growing assault on "racial profiling" by police, the
practice of stopping black and other minority motorists for questioning,
and sometimes a search, because of their race or ethnic background.

The American Civil Liberties Union renewed its criticism of racial
profiling yesterday in a lawsuit filed in federal district court in
Oklahoma City. The suit alleges that Army Sgt. Rossano V. Gerald, 37, who
is black, and his then 12-year-old son, Gregory, were stopped by Oklahoma
state troopers and subjected to more than two hours of questioning last
August. Searching Gerald's car without his permission, the troopers did
more than $1,000 in damage to the vehicle, according to the suit. They
found nothing illegal.

Attorney General Janet Reno has condemned racial profiling and endorsed the
concept of data collection to learn how extensive the practice is. Rep.
John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) has introduced legislation that would require
the Justice Department to collect racial and ethnic data about police stops
from law enforcement agencies across the country. Bills similar to Murray's
are being considered in other states.

Meanwhile, many leaders of police organizations wonder what all the fuss is
about. Many deny that racial profiling is a widespread police practice and
maintain that when it has occurred it has been an exception.

Skeptics include Robert T. Scully, president of the National Association of
Police Organizations, an umbrella group for 4,000 police unions. "I really
don't believe racial profiling happens," said Scully. "Police are not
stopping people because of the car they drive or the color of their skin.
They stop people because of probable cause. If [profiling] is going on, it
is the exception to the rule."

San Jose Police Chief William Lansdowne is another skeptic. He said that of
100,000 police stops a year, about 10 result in profiling allegations filed
with the department. "I don't believe it is occurring in our police
department, but the complaint is consistent from senior citizens, youths
and people of color," Lansdowne said. "I don't think we do a good enough
job explaining the reason for a car stop."

Lansdowne is not waiting for any legislative mandate. Later this month, his
department will begin collecting race and other data about every traffic
stop. "Our feeling is quite simple," said Jim Tomaino, president of the San
Jose Police Officers Association. "If you have nothing to hide, you have
nothing to hide. [Racial profiling] is a perception. But there's a big
difference between perception and fact and we said we'll show you the facts."

Perceptions, whether or not grounded in reality, have an impact on how
people act and think, which is why Lansdowne ordered the additional data
collection. "It's all about trust," he said. "I think we have a
responsibility to work closely together with community leaders. It's not
going to go away. We have an obligation to address it."

Perceptions matter in part because there is relatively little hard data on
racial profiling. "We don't know how prevalent it is," said Chuck Wexler,
executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum. "But I'll tell
you one thing: police chiefs are looking at it."

David Cole, a Georgetown University Law School professor, agreed there is a
lack of verifiable information. But Cole, the author of "No Equal Justice:
Race and Class in the American Criminal Justice System," said what
information is available suggests profiling is taking place. "There is no
data that shows a police department doesn't engage in racial profiling," he
said.

In 1992, the Orlando Sentinel obtained police videotapes of traffic stops
of more than 1,000 motorists by officers in a special drug unit of the
Volusia County, Fla., Sheriff's Department. They showed almost 70 percent
of traffic traffic stops and 80 percent of vehicle searches were of black
and Hispanic motorists. Although a Florida Supreme Court decision requires
that deputies stop motorists only for legitimate traffic violations, only
nine of the 1,084 drivers who were stopped were given a traffic citation.

As part of a settlement of a lawsuit brought by the ACLU, the Maryland
State Police agreed in the mid-1990s to collect data on traffic stops. The
results stunned even the ACLU. On a stretch of Interstate 95 northeast of
Baltimore, a focal point in police drug interdiction efforts, black drivers
accounted for 17 percent of the traffic but 70 percent of those who were
stopped.

The most recent case involved an investigation of the New Jersey State
Police by that state's attorney general's office, the outgrowth of lawsuits
alleging racial profiling. In a report issued last month, the investigators
said that motorists stopped by troopers stationed at two state police
barracks along the New Jersey Turnpike were about 25 percent black and 40
percent minority. But black drivers accounted for more than half and black
and Hispanic drivers more than three-quarters of the cars that were
searched by police.

In what it described as "this insidious cycle," the New Jersey report said,
"police officers may be subjecting minority citizens to heightened scrutiny
and more probing investigative tactics that lead to more arrests that are
then used to justify those same tactics."

In the April edition of its newsletter, "Vital Stats," the Statistical
Assessment Service said that while crime patterns may make it "rational"
for police to focus more on blacks and males than on whites and women,
"most individual blacks, like most males, never commit serious crime. The
unpleasant truth is that profiling can be statistically valid and yet have
discriminatory real world results since most blacks who are stopped on
suspicion [like most males] will be innocent people."

"One reason this problem is so widespread is that the stereotype the police
are relying on is not entirely irrational," said Cole. "It is more likely
that a young black man will commit crimes than an elderly white woman.
Minorities commit more crimes than whites [on a percentage-of-population
basis]. I don't think all these police officers are bigoted in the
traditional sense."

But "if you start using race as a proxy for suspicion you are going to
sweep in a whole lot of innocent people. You also create a great deal of
enmity and it undermines law enforcement when people see the police as
their enemy," he said.

Whether they believe the allegations of widespread racial profiling, police
executives around the country know that this perception by many blacks and
other minorities cannot be ignored. Last fall, the International
Association of Chiefs of Police held a forum on "professional traffic
stops" that emphasized the importance of training and supervision to
prevent "biased traffic stops."

The organization opposes legislation mandating the collection of racial
data at traffic stops, arguing that it would be burdensome and could make
what is often a difficult and sometimes dangerous moment in police work
even more so. The organization also argues that the resources that would be
applied to data collection could be better used improving police training
and paying for video cameras in all police cruisers. But it does not deny
that racial profiling happens.

"It clearly does happen," said Dan Rosenblatt, executive director of the
chiefs' association. "And where it does happen, it is a problem. New Jersey
found it. We're still not convinced that the problems are systemic or
widespread. . . . But to say it is not a problem when it is is denying
reality."

The Police Executive Research Forum recently held a meeting on the subject
with about 20 police chiefs and community leaders from their cities and is
trying to craft a model policy on traffic stops. Wexler, the group's
executive director, said the community leaders made clear that while they
object to some police tactics, they want a continuation of the aggressive
policing that has helped produce a dramatic decline in the crime rate in
many cities.

"Police departments are as effective as the community allows them to be and
that's critical," Wexler said. "The days of what James Baldwin called an
occupying army are over. It's not that people just want more police. They
want more and better police. They don't want an invading army, but they
also don't want the police to back off."

New Jersey Stops and Searches

The New Jersey attorney general prepared a study of motor vehicle stops and
searches by officers from two state police stations, Moorestown and
Cranbury. The study found a disproportionate number of minorities were
searched.

Motor vehicle stops

White 59%

Black 27%

Hispanic 7%

Asian 4%

Other 3%

Searches

White 21%

Black 53%

Hispanic 24%

Asian 1%

Other 1%

NOTES: Stop figures are from April 1997 through November 1998. Search
figures are from various dates between January 1994 and February 1999.