Reno Urges Look at ‘Racial Profiles’ Issue

Atty. Gen. Janet Reno made an impassioned plea Thursday for local police and other law enforcement officials to deal with citizen complaints about searches based on “racial profiles.”

“We can’t duck this issue,” Reno said, adding that the Justice Department has “a number of investigations underway” of specific cases, trying to determine if police are violating individual rights by targeting people based on their race.

Although recognizing organized police opposition to such inquiries, Reno said that “hard facts” are needed to determine if the practice is widespread. “And let’s--where we see the problem--do something about it,” she said.

A proposal to require a national study of why police stop and search motorists died in Congress last year but will be taken up again.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Customs Service said that it will establish an independent review panel to evaluate complaints of racial bias from airline passengers who have been strip-searched by inspectors looking for smuggled drugs.

“If a bias exists, whether perceived or real, it is paramount that we find its cause and eliminate it,” Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said in announcing the panel, which will report its findings in three months.

The agency is facing at least a dozen lawsuits over body searches, including a class-action complaint by 100 black women in Chicago who say they were singled out because of their race and gender.

Reno, declining to comment on Customs Service practices, said at her weekly news briefing that some police departments are trying to make officers more sensitive to minority concerns through training and other techniques.

On a recent visit to San Diego, she said, she learned that officers who stop motorists for traffic infractions will encode racial data on hand-held computers as part of a community study.

“They’re not compiling specific case information,” she said. “They’re compiling numbers to see if there is an unwarranted skewing that would indicate an inappropriate reliance on a racial profile.

“I think that speaks volumes for what police can do in other ways to, No. 1, identify the scope of the problem, and No. 2, to take steps to correct it.”

The House last year passed a bill sponsored by Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.), a leading member of the Congressional Black Caucus, to require a Justice Department study of racial and ethnic statistics on traffic stops by state and local police officers.

Conyers told his colleagues: “There are virtually no African American males--including congressmen, actors, athletes and office workers--who have not been stopped at one time or another for an alleged traffic violation, namely DWB: driving while black.”

The House-passed bill, however, died in the Senate Judiciary Committee, when Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah), the chairman, refused to call hearings because of opposition from the National Assn. of Police Organizations, the National Troopers Coalition and other law enforcement groups.

Robert T. Scully, executive director of the police group, which represents 4,000 police unions, said Thursday that he still opposes a national study. Police would resent being asked to collect data on the race or ethnic background of those they stop and often search, and many motorists probably would balk at furnishing such information, Scully said.

Moreover, he said, “there is no pressing need or justification for this study.”

Conyers said that he plans to reintroduce his bill later this month with additional sponsors.