Report Accuses CHP of Racial Profiling

Assembly Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa’s office Thursday released a highly critical draft report alleging that the California Highway Patrol’s drug interdiction program targets Latino motorists--but promptly disavowed the study as not completely factual and lacking evidence to support its own conclusions.

Despite the misgivings, the speaker’s office said it released the document “to avoid undue speculation that could compromise the CHP’s drug interdiction efforts.”

The unusual action, taken after Gov. Gray Davis ordered the CHP this week to compile racial and ethnic data on motorists it stops, once again puts the spotlight on the report’s author, controversial former journalist Gary Webb. He was the writer of a discredited 1996 series of stories in the San Jose Mercury News alleging that CIA operatives had allied themselves with cocaine traffickers to help finance the 1980s Contra war in Nicaragua.

CHP Commissioner D.O. “Spike” Helmick criticized Webb as biased against Operation Pipeline, the agency’s 40-officer drug interdiction program, and for using what he called faulty methodology in reaching his conclusions.

“Mr. Webb has a problem with Operation Pipeline in its entirety,” Helmick said. He emphasized that his agency does not use, or condone using, race or ethnicity as a basis of traffic stops for vehicle code violations or in looking for drugs. “Mr. Webb’s views on this are well known.”

The commissioner noted that Webb had written an article for Esquire magazine in April that was highly critical of Operation Pipeline nationally and in California.

Part of the article was based on work Webb did for the state Assembly that culminated in the report released Thursday. Webb works for the Joint Legislative Task Force on Government Oversight, created in 1997 by then-Democratic Speaker Cruz Bustamante to investigate state government operations. It was considered a thorn in the side of Republican Pete Wilson’s administration.

Webb defended his report, though he declined to elaborate. “I think that the report speaks for itself about what was occurring at the CHP,” he said. “The report is based on the CHP’s own records.”

The 42-page report says that although the CHP has a strong official policy against racial profiling, the practice has been unofficially tolerated and in some cases encouraged. Operation Pipeline’s tactics include using a large number of traffic stops for minor vehicle code violations, some of which lead to searches of motorists for drugs. This effort mainly targets innocent Latinos, according to the report.

Part of the problem, the report says, is a lack of adequate upper-level management of the program, leaving day-to-day supervision to line supervisors who encourage Operation Pipeline officers to make as many stops as possible.

“According to CHP’s own figures, between 80% to 90% of all motorists arrested by Pipeline units since 1997 have been members of minority groups,” mostly Latino, the report says. The report also says that CHP figures show that in nine out of 10 cases, Operation Pipeline searches turn up nothing incriminating.

The CHP, Helmick said, has taken steps to improve management of Operation Pipeline, which began in 1988, but he insisted that the agency has done nothing illegal and defended his drug interdiction officers. “This is their job [to look for drugs] and I won’t apologize for that. These are legitimate stops,” the commissioner said.

“We are constantly looking at our programs and looking where we can improve,” Helmick said. “If we’re doing something wrong, I’ll fix it. If we are doing something illegal, I’ll fix it.”

In releasing the report, Lynn Montgomery, director of Villaraigosa’s office of member services, wrote a two-page cover letter explaining that “because of the sensitivity of the topic of the report, it is important to clarify what the report does and does not do.”

“As the report states, it is based primarily upon information derived from newspaper articles, a literature search, some CHP records and the personal experiences of the consultant who wrote the report,” the letter states. “The methodology of the report is based on major assumptions supported by limited anecdotal information. It should not be construed as being completely factual. In this way, it is very different from a report by the state auditor or the legislative analyst’s office.

“In fact,” the letter continues, “while the report claims to show that racial profiling is used by the CHP in its Operation Pipeline drug interdiction program, there is no data in the report to support this contention, nor is any currently available.”

Montgomery said in an interview that people will have to draw their own conclusions about the report. She said that although the speaker’s office views the report as a draft, there are no plans to do anything else with it. “We thought it was better to err” on the side of releasing the document, she said.

A spokesman for the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California, which has sued the CHP over alleged racial profiling in Operation Pipeline and had been demanding the release of the report, called the document an “unprecedented thorough investigation.”