The guidelines cautioned troopers to be suspicious of rental cars, "scrupulous obedience to traffic laws," and drivers wearing "lots of gold," or who do not "fit the vehicle," and "ethnic groups associated with the drug trade." In a front-page article, the newspaper told the story of Michael Stovall, a 35-year-old lawyer who passed a police officer going in the opposite direction on a city street and watched as the patrolman did a U-turn and pulled up behind him. Some deny that the phenomenon of racial profiling even exists, while others declare with indignation that their officers do not stop motorists on the basis of skin color.At the same time that racial profiling by law enforcement was expanding, the Supreme Court's sensitivity to Fourth Amendment rights was contracting. Bridgeport, the state's largest city where blacks and Hispanics comprise 85 percent of the population, borders Trumbull – which is 98 percent white. Each pretextual traffic stop involves an untruth, and both the officer and the driver recognize this. Of these 262 stops, 85.9 percent were of minorities as shown below:Sometimes the discriminatory nature of profile stops and searches was so blatant that judges took notice.
All the evidence to date suggests that using traffic laws for non-traffic purposes has been a disaster for people of color and has deeply eroded public confidence in law enforcement. The Philadelphia suburbs are predominantly white and many suburban drivers come into the city on a daily basis. At the time, U.S. attorney Lincoln Almond (now Governor of Rhode Island) claimed that Hispanics were dominating the cocaine and heroin trades in the United States and were defendants in more than 90 percent of drug cases.In mid-May, the national ACLU set up a nationwide DWB hotline – 1-877-6-PROFILE.
The techniques taught and widely encouraged by the DEA as part of Operation Pipeline have been instrumental in spreading the use of pretext stops, which are at the heart of the racial profiling debate. The incident reports disclosed that where a reason is given for a car stop, in virtually all cases the precipitating event was an alleged traffic violation.It is time for law enforcement professionals to use their own best professional judgment in scrutinizing the wisdom of the pretextual stop tactic. Of the violators, 17.5 percent were black, and 74.7 percent were white. "With slightly twice as much data to work with for the week of October 6, 1997 (as a result of requesting incident reports from an additional district), of the 1,083 car stops, race was recorded for 524 instances. A small light bulb must illuminate the rear license plate. Williams' remarks received wide media attention at a time when Whitman and other state officials were already facing heightened media scrutiny over recent incidents of profiling and public anger over police mistreatment of black suspects.In 1986, a racially biased drug courier profile was introduced to the highway patrol by the DEA. It implies that a motorist may be stopped by a police officer largely because of racial bias rather than any visible violation of traffic law. The steps towards a solution are clear:Significant blame for this rampant abuse of power also can be laid at the feet of the government's "war on drugs," a fundamentally misguided crusade enthusiastically embraced by lawmakers and administrations of both parties at every level of government. Our state affiliates and other civil rights advocates have brought lawsuits based on showings of discrimination by law enforcement agencies, but legal action is only a beginning; these cases are always difficult, long-term efforts that take considerable resources and plaintiffs of unusual fortitude.
I do not feel safe around cops. Portland Police Chief Charles Moose said the resolution was intended to reassure citizens that race-based policing would not be allowed.The profile, described by one court as "an informally compiled abstract of characteristics thought typical of persons carrying illicit drugs," had been used in the war on drugs for some time.