Thursday, April 10, 2003
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

RACIAL PROFILING: Senate panel kills bill

Similar measure died earlier this session; civil liberties advocates decry decision

CARSON CITY -- For the second time this session, a Senate panel has killed a bill aimed at preventing racial profiling by police.

The Senate Government Affairs Committee, which heard police representatives on Monday say the cost of collecting the traffic stop information required in Senate Bill 360 would be prohibitive, voted to kill the measure in its entirety.

It was the second racial profiling-related bill to die this session. The same panel earlier this session killed a bill by Sen. Joe Neal, D-North Las Vegas, to make racial profiling by police a misdemeanor.

Senate Bill 360 was sought by Senate Minority Leader Dina Titus, D-Las Vegas, in part because of the earlier action on the Neal bill.

Titus, along with Sen. Terry Care, D-Las Vegas, opposed the motion by the committee to kill the profiling measure.

Titus' bill would have required data collection of traffic stops, training for law enforcement officers on the issue of racial profiling and make information available to motorists on what they could do if they believed they were subjected to inappropriate profiling.

But Senate Majority Leader Bill Raggio, R-Reno, a member of the committee, said the Legislature could direct the Department of Motor Vehicles by letter to include the information for motorists. The police training issue could be addressed in the same way, he said.

"We have a very clear law on the books that prohibits this biased treatment or racial profiling, and I think it's adequate," he said.

Raggio said racial profiling, or as police call it, biased-based policing, is a problem in Nevada. But testimony from law enforcement shows the problem is being addressed, he said.

Raggio also said that if the bill was passed with just the training and driver education information included, it could become a point of contention with the Assembly if it were changed in any significant way.

Titus argued for passage with at least the two noncontroversial components of her bill, but the committee voted to kill the measure instead.

Richard Siegel, president of the American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada, expressed disappointment at the vote, saying commitments had been made by lawmakers to process a bill this session to further reduce the use of racial profiling.

"Those promises were thrown in the face of the minority communities of Clark and Washoe counties today without any good explanation," he said.

"It is an embarrassment, they should be ashamed of themselves and it sends a terrible message to our minority communities," said ACLU Executive Director Gary Peck.

Assembly Bill 500 of the 2001 session made racial profiling illegal. It also required a one-year study of traffic stops by police to determine if there is a problem with profiling in Nevada.

The study, released earlier this year, found that blacks were at the wheel in about 11 percent of the 386,000 traffic stops included in the study. Blacks represent just over 6 percent of the Nevada driving population.