Op-Ed, Virginian Pilot, November 6, 2000

By Kent Willis

Does Racial Discrimination Drive Police Checks in Virginia?

 

J

ames and Etta Carter's nightmare began on their 40th wedding anniversary as they were driving on Interstate 95 returning from a trip to Florida.  Stopped for "wobbly driving" by the police, the elderly couple was forced to stand by the side of the road while canine unit officers emptied their vehicle, searching it and every item inside.  The ordeal took three hours, and the Carters had to repack their own car when it was over.  No drugs or other contraband were found.
 
The Carters were victims of Driving While Black, or DWB, a term for a shameful phenomenon that affects not only the daily lives of people of color, but also gives us a horrifying glimpse into the nature of racial prejudice.
 
Race-based traffic stops turn one of the most ordinary and quintessentially American activities into an experience fraught with danger and risk.
 
Even a member of the President's staff said he was the victim of racial profiling while driving in the suburbs of Washington, D.C.  The Clinton aide and his wife were stopped by the police as carjacking suspects, handcuffed and patted down for possible weapons.
 
Both incidents highlight the fact that charges of racial profiling can come from all walks of life  Elected officials, prominent atheletes, lawyers, business leaders and their families -- even police officers -- are among those who have been hauled out of their cars and subjected to humiliating roadside searches by police, solely because they were members of a minority group.
 
Pretextual traffic stops -- stops where the alleged traffic infraction is often noot the real reason that the officer has stopped the driver -- fuel the belief that the police are not only unfair and biased, but untruthful as well.  Each pretextual traffic stop involves an untruth, and both the officer and the driver recognize this.  This becomes obvious when the officer asks the driver whether he or she is carrying drugs or guns, and seeks consent to search the car.  If the stop was really about the enforcement of traffic codes, there would be no need for the search.
 
The statistics are alarming.  In Florida, the Orlando Sentinel videotaped traffic stops and discovered that 70 percent of the vehicles pulled aside on Interstate 95 were driven by African-American motorists, a demographic group that makes up less than 10 percent of the driver population.  On the New Jersey Turnpike, African-Americans accounted for only about 14 percent of drivers, but 46 percent of those who were pulled over by police.  In Maryland, African-Americans made up 18 percent of all traffic violators, but 70 percent of those who had their cars searched.
 
Despite these figures, law enforcement officials tend to deny the reality of racial profiling on our highways, or argue without apology that the disproportionate numbers of traffic stops of African-Americans and other minorities is not discrimination.  They contend that profiling is a statistical illusion created by the fact that people who are poor are more likely to commit crimes, and that a disproportionately high number of poor people are people of color.
 
Advocates of racial justice have launched a nationwide campaign to end discriminatory police stops along our nations' highways.  Lawsuits have been filed in Maryland, New Jersey, Illinois, Florida and Oklahoma, California, and Utah.  Many civil rights groups support the passage of legislation at the state and federal level that would require police to keep detailed records of traffic stops, including the race and ethnicity of the person stopped.
 
Collecting and analyzing data on racial profiling in Virginia should be a high priority.  State lawmakers have been reluctant to address the issue, running scared from bills in both the 1999 and 2000 legislative sessions after police claimed that profiling could not possibly happen here.  In a state with a long, documented history of race discrimination in employment, criminal justice, and politics, it is hard to accept this claim -- especially when one considers the obvious self-interest of the source, and the fact that even police admit that it is based solely on their impressions.
 
The City of Richmond Police Department boldly announced several months ago that it would conduct its own study of racial profiling.  Representatives of the Department now claim to have collected some of the raw data, but not to have the funds to analyze it.
 
Virginia's lawmakers should conduct a study of DWB before public outcry demands it.  Given what we know about racial profiling, refusing to study it amounts to a passive cover-up.
 
For the citizens of Virginia, there is no downside to studying racial profiling.  Perhaps a study will show that DWB does not exist in Virginia and quell the storm brewing over this issue.  However, if the study shows that racial profiling does exist in our state, just as it does in other states along the I-95 corridor, we will have the basis for doing something about it.
 
No one enjoys being forced to visit the dark heart of racial prejudice, but Virginia's lawmakers must conduct a study of DWB before it settles in to become part of Virginia's shameful legacy of racial discrimination.

Kent Willis is the Executive Director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia.