Placentia Police Chief Moves to Smooth Racial Controversy

Placentia’s police chief Wednesday ordered his officers to stop using the letter N as the racial designation on traffic tickets for African American motorists after nearly 900 people signed a petition blasting the practice as insensitive and racist.

The N stands for “Negro” and stems from old law enforcement racial codes that haven’t been used for many years.

“I am an African American; I have never been or will ever be the ‘N word,’ ” said Placentia resident Comelita Brown.

Brown, 43, was given a speeding ticket in Placentia on Jan. 15--the Martin Luther King Jr. national holiday--by a white traffic officer. Brown did not notice until later that in the space designated on the ticket for race the officer used the letter N.

The officer should have used B, for black, Placentia Police Chief Russ Rice told the City Council on Tuesday night, because that is the department’s policy. B is the abbreviation set up by the National Crime Information Center, which designates letters for racial groups. Police departments including Placentia rely on the center to set standards for record keeping.

Police departments are not required by law to note the race of people who receive traffic citations, and court officials said that only about half of all Orange County departments do so.

For departments that do record the race, court officials said almost all tickets use B to describe African Americans instead of N.

Most Placentia traffic officers already use the proper racial designation, the chief told the City Council. The officer who wrote the citation is a former training official who taught procedures to new recruits, police spokeswoman Corrine Loomis acknowledged.

Matt Reynolds, the officer in charge of the police services division, said Rice is “extremely sensitive” to Brown’s complaint. He said the officer who wrote the ticket was unaware how offensive it was to Brown but added, “I’m sure he knows by now.”

Rice said Wednesday that he has instructed the lieutenant in his professional standards bureau to issue a memo departmentwide to make sure everyone knows the proper racial descriptors for tickets.

Brown said she was disappointed that she did not receive a response from the city. But police spokeswoman Loomis said that was inadvertent. Brown’s letter had gone to the city manager, who was on vacation. Chief Rice did write Brown on Wednesday as a follow-up to her complaints at the City Council meeting.

Brown, who works for the state Department of Fair Employment and Housing, and some close friends were so upset about the N designation that they brought it to the attention of their church, Friendship Baptist in Yorba Linda. It took just one Sunday service to produce the 875 protest signatures, she said. The signatures came with a letter from the pastor, the Rev. James D. Carrington, who asked the police chief to take official action to make sure the N designation was not used again. Though most of the signatures came from African Americans, some are from others who identified with problems of racial discrimination.

One of those supporting Brown at the meeting was former Placentia police officer John Smith, who said he was Orange County’s first African American police officer in the early 1960s. Smith told the council that an N designation on a ticket is offensive to any African American.

“What does the N stand for?” Smith said later. “Nobody? A no-account? Nothing?”

Brown said her first reaction was that the officer was using a racial slur.

“Even if he meant ‘Negro,’ that’s demeaning right there,” said Winifera Harper of Perris, who attends law school with Brown. “The word ‘Negro’ was designed to describe people who were treated as less than human.”

Despite the Police Department’s action, Brown said later that she isn’t satisfied. At a minimum, she said, someone owes her an apology, even if it was unintentional.

Racial abbreviations can be a tricky issue. Not all law enforcement organizations agree on racial code designations. For example, the state Department of Justice recommends H for Latinos, meaning “Hispanic,” and C and J for Chinese Americans and Japanese Americans. But the National Crime Information Center, which the Placentia police follow, suggests A for all Asian Americans.

What Brown and the other petitioners want is some kind of written policy added to Placentia’s books that the letter N will not be used again in any police report to refer to African Americans.

“Placentia just needs to get with it,” Brown said.

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Race Noted

An African American motorist’s protest has led Placentia police to bar use of “N,” which stands for “Negro” as a racial descriptor on traffic citations. Police policy, which some ignore, is that “B” be used, for blacks.