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ACLU seeks to end racial profiling by police
Monday, March 20, 2000 By Carmen J. Lee, Post-Gazette Education Writer
The Greater Pittsburgh Chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union is planning to meet privately with community groups from across the region today to launch a campaign against racial profiling by police.
The work is part of a national effort by the ACLU and other groups to end the illegal targeting of minorities as criminal suspects, beginning with unfair traffic stops.
One big push in the campaign is to get police departments voluntarily or through litigation or legislation to collect and publicize racial statistics on traffic stops.
At the Greater Pittsburgh ACLU's annual meeting yesterday, John Crew, coordinator of the ACLU's National Campaign Against Racial Profiling, urged members to get involved in the effort.
Crew said in his 15 years of working on police reform, he has never before seen such a major opportunity to have a significant impact on the issue as is the case now with racial profiling.
A majority of Americans, regardless of race, believe racial profiling is wrong and is practiced, he said. The International Chiefs of Police Association has condemned racial profiling and called for police departments to collect racial statistics on traffic stops.
And because of incidents involving prominent black citizens subjected to unfair traffic stops, a growing number of police departments across the country have begun collecting and publicizing information about traffic stops.
In the past six months, the number of police departments collecting data on traffic stops has grown from about 50 to more than 200, said Vic Walczak, executive director of the Greater Pittsburgh ACLU.
Pittsburgh police are required to collect such data because of a federal consent degree but have not made the information public, Walczak said.
The local ACLU's goal is for the Pittsburgh police department to publicize its statistics and for suburban departments to collect the data and make it public.
"We should fight the good fight against racial profiling this year because we can win," Crew told his audience at Carlow College. "While we have an opportunity, we need to address this issue because it's not a problem that's going to correct itself."
During his speech, Crew described how frequently police across the country had violated the rights of innocent people by using "pretext stops."
The practice, referred to at times from the motorist's perspective as "driving while black," involves using an exaggerated or minor traffic violation such as driving a couple of miles over the speed limit as an excuse to stop a driver who is a member of a minority group.
Among the most common reasons for actually stopping the driver, Crew said, were to search the vehicle for drugs, to question why the person is in a predominantly white neighborhood, or to maintain control in an urban community.
Crew contended that many statistics show the majority of people stopped were innocent of any wrongdoing, demonstrating the low success rate of the tactic.
The practice also perpetuates other problems such as racial segregation in communities and poor support of community policing efforts, he said.
It's even becoming more difficult to convict people who are guilty of crimes because a growing number of individuals selected as jurors have had experiences or know of others' experiences that cause them to believe the traffic stops are deceptive and police are lying.
"Racial profiling is not a problem for one community," Crew said. "It's a problem for America, and everybody needs to address it."
During yesterday's meeting, the local ACLU chapter gave U.S. Congressman William Coyne its 2000 Marjorie Matson Award for his voting record on civil liberties issues. Matson was a civil rights lawyer who worked with the ACLU.
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