ACLU COLLECTING DATA ON POLICE TREATMENT OF MINORITY MOTORISTS

LOS ANGELES -- Last June, California Assemblyman Kevin Murray was on
his way to celebrate his victory in a state Senate primary race when
his car was pulled over by a Beverly Hills police officer.

Though he can't prove it and the police department denies it, Murray,
who wasn't ticketed, believes he was stopped for no reason other than
for being black.

For years, many law-abiding minority motorists, particularly
African-American and Hispanic men, have been subjected to such
treatment, asked in an accusatory manner about what they were doing in
a particular neighborhood, where they were coming from and how they
acquired their vehicles.

Often dismissed by police as paranoid, Murray and others who have
experienced such stops are part of a growing movement to document the
incidents to prove their long-standing suspicions that minorities are
victims of such targeting by law enforcement agencies much more
frequently than whites.

Last fall, the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California
launched an effort to record the complaints of minority motorists in
California on a hot line. Callers flooded it during the first few
minutes of the operation, forcing the ACLU to shut down the line
temporarily to increase the capacity. So far more than 500 people have
lodged complaints.

The ACLU is hoping to use the data to bring back measures in the
California legislature and Congress that would require law enforcement
agencies to collect racial information about the motorists they stop
but do not arrest. Such data, Murray and other supporters assert,
could spur changes in police policy.

"Any black male can tell you at least one incident that he's gone
through and other incidents that have occurred with (black) people he
knows," said Murray, a Democrat whose police monitoring bill was
vetoed by outgoing California Gov. Pete Wilson. With Democrat Gray
Davis succeeding Wilson this month, Murray believes the measure has a
better chance of becoming law.

The bill was modeled on a measure sponsored by U.S. Rep. John Conyers,
D-Mich., which was approved by the House but died in a Senate
committee. Conyers has indicated he will reintroduce his measure in
the new Congress. Meanwhile, lawmakers in Ohio, Rhode Island and
Pennsylvania are considering similar legislation.

Jane Whicher, staff counsel at the ACLU of Illinois, says the
organization supports legislative solutions. The ACLU of Illinois is
involved in a class-action lawsuit filed by Hispanic and black
motorists who assert that Illinois State Police stopped them because
of their race.

"We're not saying that all police officers are bad," added Murray,
part of a class-action lawsuit charging discrimination against the
Beverly Hills Police Department. But by collecting the racial data on
who gets stopped, he said, "we can learn what's going on or at the
very least see whether it is merely a perception problem."

Complaints about unwarranted police stops are so commonplace among
African Americans and Hispanics that the problem has acquired a label:
DWB -- driving while black or brown.

In California, where charges of racism among police remain in the wake
of the Rodney King beating, the list of prominent African Americans
stopped for no apparent reason includes former Lakers player Jamaal
Wilkes, actor LeVar Burton, actor Blair Underwood, Olympic medalist Al
Joyner, actor Wesley Snipes and Christopher Darden, a prosecutor in
the O.J. Simpson criminal case.

Recently in Boston, a federal judge reduced to 2 1/2 years from 4
years the sentence of a black man who pleaded guilty to possessing a
firearm, ruling that the longer term had been based mainly on minor
traffic offenses. Judge Nancy Gertner asserted that the man, Alexander
Leviner, might have been stopped because of his race.

Leviner's record, she wrote, raises "questions about what drew the
officer's attention to (him) in the first place." Though Leviner faced
four convictions for offenses such as driving without a license,
Gertner wrote there was no evidence he was driving recklessly or had
broken traffic laws when officers stopped him.

Statistics collected by the Maryland State Police under a settlement
with an African-American motorist appear to lend credence to the
belief that minorities are stopped more than white drivers.

The state police agreed to collect the data after the plaintiff
uncovered an internal memo that warned troopers to target black men
driving east on Interstate 68 as possible drug suspects. The data,
collected from 1994 to 1997, showed that while blacks made up only 18
percent of the motorists on interstate highways, they represented 80
percent of the people targeted for searches. The number of searches
prompted the federal court to extend the study to include all stops.

"Maryland isn't unique. But it's the only place we have statistics,"
said Mary Jeon, an attorney with the ACLU of Maryland, which filed the
suit on behalf of the black motorist. "I suspect many states have this
problem."

Conyers is seeking in his bill to require the Department of Justice to
collect from all police agencies racial and ethnic data on motorists
involved in stops. After two years, the department would report the
findings to Congress.

"People who endured this in embarrassment and silence in the past are
coming forward because of the national recognition that this happens
to virtually everyone (who is a minority)," Conyers said. "Frequently,
we find that the incidents curtail automatically when they reach the
public level of discussion."

Though the problem is not new, many community activists and experts
assert that the targeting of people of color has escalated with the
war on drugs. The activists say police departments often develop
profiles of drug traffickers based on such factors as race, age, style
of dress and make of vehicle driven.

Blacks and Hispanics are "who we have been conditioned to believe
commit crimes," said Ronald Hampton, executive director of the
National Black Police Association, a nonprofit Washington-based group
that supported the Murray and Conyers bills.

"So when you see a black person drive a 1998 BMW, Navigator or
Mercedes you're going to conclude they got the car from selling drugs
or they stole it," he added.

Other police groups disagree.

"Just because someone is stopped and no reason is given doesn't mean
there is no reason for the stop," said Stephen McSpadden, general
counsel for the National Association of Police Organizations, which
represents about 220,000 officers.

"There may be a small number of (officers) who have abused their
positions," McSpadden said. "But our experience is that the vast
majority of officers are doing the right thing."

According to legal experts, a 1996 Supreme Court ruling gave police
more latitude to stop motorists with little or no provocation. In
Whren vs. U.S., justices ruled that police can stop a motorist for a
traffic violation even if their real intent is to investigate whether
the driver was involved in criminal activity.

This has proven easy, according to David Harris, a professor at the
University of Toledo College of Law and a visiting professor at Wayne
State University Law School. He said traffic codes in many states have
detailed regulations that indicate how far motorists should signal
from the corner, how much room they should give the driver in front of
them and the depth of the tire tread.

"One of the problems with the Whren case is that anybody can be
stopped for any reason," he added.

Nevertheless, stopping motorists simply because of their race would
violate the Fourth Amendment, the equal-protection clause of the
Constitution, experts said.