Questioning of Reporter Not Profiling, Report Says

A Ventura County sheriff’s deputy accused of racial profiling was justified in questioning a black newspaper reporter he suspected of selling merchandise without a permit, according to a department investigation released Wednesday.

“While it is regretful that this incident was perceived as racial profiling . . . the deputy in fact acted within reason, law and department policy,” according to a department statement.

The reporter, Mark Jennings, of the Ventura County Star, expressed disappointment with the sheriff’s findings.

‘I’m not surprised,” he said. “I’m kind of disappointed. . . .I just totally disagree. . . . He stopped me because I was a black male with a cell phone.”

Jennings, 24, said he was considering filing a lawsuit, but might be satisfied with an apology.

According to his formal complaint, Jennings was on a downtown Moorpark sidewalk talking on his cell phone Jan. 18 when a deputy spotted him from his patrol car, stopped and questioned him.

The deputy, whom sheriff’s officials decline to identify, had answered a call a day earlier about a half-mile away in which three men, two of them white and the other black, were selling cell phones or newspaper subscriptions without a permit, officials said.

The deputy had interviewed the white men on that call and then was sent to a crash scene before he could talk to the black man. When the deputy saw Jennings the next day, dressed in a tie and slacks like the three suspects, he stopped to question him, said Sheriff’s Cmdr. Mike Lewis.

Both incidents occurred about 3 p.m. and Jennings was carrying a portfolio similar to the men in the earlier call, Lewis said.

The conversation between the deputy and Jennings lasted less than five minutes, according to a review of patrol car radio transmissions. During that time, Jennings said, the deputy asked him for several forms of identification.

Jennings has worked for the Star since October but had begun covering Moorpark just three days before the incident.