‘Racial Profiling’ Study Needed

The Interstate 95 corridor, the primary north-south highway on the East Coast, has seen an unusual share of racial and ethnic stereotyping in traffic stops of drug suspects.

Now, finally, the U.S. Justice Department has stepped in to track the practices of one law enforcement agency, the New Jersey State Police. Now, there is an unprecedented agreement among the Justice Department, the state of New Jersey and its state police intended to curb so-called racial profiling, cops making traffic stops without probable cause and based largely on motorists’ race or ethnicity. It’s a deal likely to affect police departments across the country.

In connection with the case, Bill Lan Lee, the Justice Department’s civil rights chief, has said the New Jersey agreement ought to put pressure on law enforcement agencies around the nation to take similar action.

Here in California, Gov. Gray Davis recently vetoed legislation by state Sen. Kevin Murray (D-Los Angeles) that would have required law enforcement agencies to keep specific data on their traffic stops. Davis questioned how meaningful the information would be and left it to local law enforcement agencies to make a decision, though he did order the California Highway Patrol to analyze all its traffic stops and to collect data from local police departments that are gathering information.

Now several California police and sheriff’s departments have agreed to track and provide information on the practice, but they do not yet include the Los Angeles Police Department. The LAPD’s Chief Bernard C. Parks and Cmdr. Dave Kalish contend that the department’s officers do not practice racial profiling, saying that no one is stopped solely on the basis of race or ethnicity. Parks has said that there is no need for such a study here. Many minorities would challenge that view. In fact, one would be hard-pressed to find an African American who doesn’t know someone who was pulled over for DWB--”driving while black.”

The LAPD has a long history of gathering information in traffic stops and street interviews, even taking pictures of suspected gang members. Such aggressive practices were established in the 1970s by the LAPD’s antigang CRASH units, which are now at the heart of a scandal over police misconduct.

Gov. Davis says that studies of police traffic stops would be too expensive. Chief Parks and many other top police officers around the country say that racial profiling has not happened on their watch. The National Fraternal Order of Police says the charges are just another effort to portray good cops as bad guys. But evidence in this matter is not hard to assemble, and police chiefs ought to be willing to back up their assertions that profiling charges are fantasy.

Black motorists from doctors to teachers--in Los Angeles and across the nation--have complained. Are they all just making this up? Facts are needed. Racial profiling has no place on America’s streets and highways.