ACLU: STATE POLICE HABITUALLY TARGET MINORITY MOTORISTS

Chicago - The American Civil Liberties Union Says it has statistical
evidence backing up allegations in a nearly 5-year-old federal lawsuit
alleging that the Illinois State Police consistently made unprovoked stops
of minority motorists.

The group's statistical analysis involved more than 6 million records,
although state police record racial data in only a small percentage of
stops.

At issue are officers assigned to the state police "Valkyrie" drug
interdiction unit, which was formed in 1990 to crack down on drug traffic.
The ACLU contends that their analysis shows that many stops since that time
have been based on nothing more than race.

For example, from 1990 to 1995, some "Valkyrie" troopers targeted Hispanic
drivers at rates far higher than the proportionate number of Hispanic
drivers on the road, the ACLU said.

While Hispanics make up 7.9 percent of the Illinois population and
constitute 2.7 percent of the personal vehicle trips in Illinois, nearly a
third of certain stops involved Hispanics, according to the analyses by a
team of experts retained by the ACLU.

The ACLU says the numbers back up allegations that police use the technique
to take advantage of drug forfeiture laws that allow police to seize
property - cars or money, for example - found in a search that turns up
drugs, even without a criminal conviction.

"It's the equivalent of traveling in a totalitarian state where you are
routinely stopped for searches," said Harvey Grossman, the ACLU's legal
director. "It's like a tax for driving on the highway."

But many of the searches turn up nothing.

In 1992, for example, the state police drug interdiction unit reported
stopping 28,807 vehicles and conducting 5,109 searches. Seizures were made
in 620 instances, and nothing was seized in 4,489 searches, according to
state police statistics, which were added to the ACLU's lawsuit Friday.

"When we make a stop, it's not based on race or gender or anything of that
nature," said Lincoln Hampton, a state police spokesman. "It's based on
probable cause that some law is being broken, whether it's traffic or
otherwise. We have to have a reason."

But one of the men who conducted the ACLU analysis said the state police
doesn't have the numbers to back up that contention. In 1992, for example,
"Valkyrie" officers filed only 1,843 field reports for those 28,807 stops,
according to the data.

Getting information about black drivers, for example, has been more
difficult.

The ACLU lost a court battle to obtain a copy of Illinois driver's license
records for $500 - instead of the $160,000 asked by the Illinois secretary
of state - which the ACLU intended to use to analyze the treatment of black
drivers.

U.S. Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., plans to reintroduce a bill that would
require the Department of Justice to collect from all police agencies racial
and ethnic data on motorists involved in stops.

Meanwhile in Illinois, a new seatbelt law proposed by House Speaker Michael
Madigan would require state police and Chicago police officers to record the
race of every person who gets a written warning or citation.