COURT RULES AGENTS CAN CONSIDER ETHNICITY WHEN STOPPING DRIVERS

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- Border Patrol agents can consider ethnicity when they
make traffic stops, a federal appeals court ruled in a case involving two
Hispanic men who turned their cars around to avoid a checkpoint.

The ruling comes at a time when the use of ethnic background as the basis
for traffic stops is receiving increasing attention throughout the country.

In a 2-1 ruling, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Thursday upheld
the detention of two Hispanic men stopped 50 miles inside the United States
after they tried to avoid a highway checkpoint.

The court said it was appropriate that among the things the officers
considered in making the stop were that the men turned around and that they
were Hispanic.

Writing for the majority, visiting U.S. District Judge Frank C. Damrell of
Fresno pointed to a Supreme Court decision in a 1975 case, in which the
court listed a number of things the police could consider in such an instance.

Among them were the character of the area; nearness to the border; traffic
patterns; previous smuggling problems in the area, the officer's experience;
and the behavior of the passengers.

After a motorist told authorities that two cars with Mexican plates turned
around a mile from the checkpoint, they were stopped.

Agents searched the cars of German Espinoza Montero-Camargo and Lorenzo
Sanchez-Guillen and found two large bags of marijuana and a .32-caliber
pistol. The men were charged.