Rights Groups Sue Davis Over Racial Profiling Data

A coalition of civil rights groups filed a state lawsuit Thursday against Gov. Gray Davis charging that he exceeded his veto authority by striking key racial data collection requirements from this year’s budget.

In an effort to shine a light on racial profiling, the state Assembly set aside $3 million for police agencies that collected five specific types of traffic stop information: motorists’ race and ethnicity, the reason for the stop, whether a search was carried out, whether contraband was found during a search and whether an arrest or citation took place.

Davis deleted all requirements but the race and ethnicity category.

Civil rights attorney Michelle Alexander said “just looking at the race of the motorists stopped tells you nothing about what happened after the stop,” and nothing about whether systematic racial profiling is occurring.

And although the state Constitution allows the governor to eliminate specific budget allocations, the ACLU contends Davis exceeded his powers by killing provisions that had no funds attached to them. The case was filed in the 1st District Court of Appeal.

In his official veto message, the governor said he believed it was “more appropriate for local law enforcement agencies to decide if the additional data” should be collected.

Davis vetoed a bill in 1999 that would have required local police to collect racial data, and lobbied against a similar bill that was scrapped before it made it to the Assembly floor. Last year a third racial profiling bill was shorn of any data collection requirement in a compromise between the governor and Assemblyman Kevin Murray (D-Los Angeles).

Still, more than 60 of California’s 433 law enforcement agencies collect some kind of racial data voluntarily. Racial data collection systems are in place at the California Highway Patrol, the San Diego Police Department and, under a federal consent decree, the Los Angeles Police Department.

“The problem is, there’s no uniformity,” said Alice Huffman, president of the California National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People. “Right now we have all kinds of data collection going on, and that’s really wonderful. But when you try to analyze it, the data doesn’t match and we’re at a loss to come out with recommendations and remedies.

“From all I can tell, it’s the law enforcement lobby that has fought this because they are scared they’ll get sued.”

Racial profiling is a controversial issue in California and nationwide. A federal class-action lawsuit, scheduled for trial early next year, alleges that vehicles driven by black or Latino motorists are up to three times as likely as those driven by whites to be searched by state drug interdiction officers. Those findings prompted the California Highway Patrol to institute a six-month moratorium on the use of “consent” vehicle searches.

The local picture isn’t much better. A six-month study in San Diego showed that blacks and Latinos were almost twice as likely as whites to be stopped. In that study, Latinos represented 20% of the driving-age population and 50% of the vehicle searches.

Huffman says similar results would probably come out if more localities adopted such systems, “but the governor has sabotaged us at every turn from putting teeth in any racial data collection legislation.”

The governor’s critics say he has caved into the powerful police lobby that has fought mandatory racial data collection and given him political contributions of more than $100,000 over the last three years.

The governor’s office did not return phone calls by The Times. Nor did Tim Gage, director of the state Department of Finance, which oversees the state budget.

Tom Marshall, spokesman for California Highway Patrol Commissioner D.O. “Spike” Helmick, said he was not aware of Davis’ action. And the commissioner did not return calls for this story.

Whether the governor had the authority to alter the budget provisions is a matter of debate. Davis deleted the majority of the racial data collection requirements and then subtracted $1,000--his estimation of the cost those conditions would have imposed.

Clark Kelso, a law professor at the University of the Pacific, said the governor has broad powers over budget actions, especially when they are not complemented by separate legislation.

Kelso said a California governor can delete language from state budgets--as long as he doesn’t alter laws independent of the budget. The governor also must make an argument that he subtracted a monetary amount that represents the cost of enacting the deleted legislative provisions.

But Santa Clara Law School professor Gerald Uelman said he was certain Davis’ action exceeded his state constitutional bounds.

“He can veto particular budget line items and decline to appropriate money for those items,” he said. “But he cannot change the language of a statute which would actually amend the language that the Legislature adopted.”

State Sen. John Burton (D-San Francisco) said he also doubts Davis acted legally.

“My feeling is that you take all or nothing,” he said. “You can’t just . . . eliminate ‘Program A’ and keep the money for something else.”

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Times researcher Maloy Moore contributed to this report.