Saturday, February 01, 2003
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

RESPONSE TO DATA: Neal plans profiling law effort

Lawmaker says study of traffic stops shows need for misdemeanor against racial profiling by officers

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A state senator plans to use data from a study on traffic stops to justify making it a crime for law enforcement officers in Nevada to engage in racial profiling.

Sen. Joe Neal, D-North Las Vegas, said the study's results show blacks and Hispanics have valid concerns about police officers targeting them because of their race.

"We think that there's a problem that needs to be addressed," Neal said Friday.

The lawmaker said he is sponsoring a bill this legislative session that would make it a misdemeanor for officers to engage in racial profiling. He said other states have passed similar laws.

Misdemeanors carry a maximum punishment of six months in jail and a $1,000 fine.

"We're talking about violation of people's rights," Neal said.

In 2001, Nevada legislators passed a law that prohibits racial profiling but did not establish a penalty for violating the law.

The same law required the attorney general's office to determine the extent of racial profiling by the Nevada Highway Patrol and police departments in Clark and Washoe counties. The study's results were made public Friday.

According to the report, 11.2 percent of the traffic stops in Nevada last year involved black motorists, who make up 6.2 percent of the state's driving population.

The study also showed that 15.5 percent of the traffic stops made by Metropolitan Police Department officers involved black motorists, who make up 8.3 percent of Clark County's driving population.

Although the disparity was larger for black motorists, Hispanics in the Las Vegas area and Nevada as a whole also were stopped at rates that exceeded their share of the driving population.

Assemblyman Wendell Williams, D-Las Vegas, author of the legislation that required the study, had no comment Friday.

Former Assemblyman Greg Brower, a Reno lawyer who served in the Legislature during the past two sessions, supported the racial profiling study but said he has doubts about whether Neal's proposed law would work.

"It's already improper for an officer to pull somebody over without probable cause," the Republican said.

Brower said results of the study should concern law enforcement officials, but he stopped short of saying the report establishes a pattern of racial profiling.

"I think it's worthy of trying to determine why there appear to be disparities, but I don't think that just the numbers in a study like this, by themselves, can tell us that there's profiling occurring," he said.

Brower said he hoped the study would lead to a "renewed emphasis, or understanding, among law enforcement that racial profiling is not to be tolerated."

Kevin Tate, chairman of the reorganization committee for the Las Vegas branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said the findings of the study seem to support beliefs already held by members of the black community in Nevada and across the country.

"In the absence of any legitimate explanation for the statistics, I think it would suggest that maybe some racial profiling is taking place," he said.

Tate, a lawyer, said statistics provide the only tangible means of identifying racial profiling.

"It's difficult to look into the hearts and minds of the individual police officers who made the stops," he said.

Tate called Neal's proposal "a laudable effort" to address the issue of racial profiling, "if in fact it can be determined that an officer engaged in racial profiling."

The Rev. Spencer Barrett, who takes over as president of the NAACP's Las Vegas branch in March, said he has doubts about whether making it a misdemeanor to engage in racial profiling would improve the problem.

"The real issue is why are blacks being pulled over more often than other racial makeups, and what can we do about it?" he said.

Barrett said he hoped the study would open a door for discussion on the issue and help police understand that "black people are no greater threat than any other people."

The study showed that Henderson police stopped a disproportionate number of both black and Hispanic drivers, but Chief Michael Mayberry said those results do not mean his officers practice racial profiling.

"We have a policy against it, we don't do it, and I wouldn't tolerate it," he said.

Trooper Jim Olschlager, a spokesman for the Highway Patrol, said his agency was pleased by its results in the study.

"We knew going in that we wouldn't really have a problem," he said.

Results indicate that troopers stopped white motorists at rates that exceeded their share of the driving population, but that was not the case for any minority group.

Olschlager said troopers, who primarily work on freeways, see a greater percentage of the population than other types of law enforcement officers.

"We don't hang around in specific neighborhoods," he said.

The spokesman called Neal's proposed law "a double-edged sword."

He wondered whether it would lead to limits on the number of minority drivers officers could stop, or whether it would make officers reluctant to make traffic stops.

Thomas Rodriguez, the Clark County School District's executive manager for diversity and affirmative action, said the study seemed inconclusive but he was "pleasantly surprised" by the numbers for Hispanics.

"If there was really racial profiling going on at an overt level I would think those numbers would be higher," he said.

He said he would like to know where the traffic stops occurred, but that information was not included in the study.

Rodriguez said he experienced racial profiling as a Hispanic teenager living in an urban Kansas ghetto but has not been a victim of the practice during his 22 years in the Las Vegas area.

"I also live in Green Valley," he noted, referring to the affluent Henderson neighborhood.