Point Reyes Light - August 17, 2000
Lawsuit claims CHP stops cars based on driver's race
In June 1998, Curtis Rodriguez, a San Jose lawyer, was driving on Highway 152 near Gilroy with a passenger, Arturo Hernandez, when the two men noticed a peculiar pattern developing along the road: in only a few miles, they had seen three Latino motorists pulled over by law officers and left standing beside their cars.
Distressed by what appeared to be a racially-biased series of traffic stops, the pair decided to take note of the event as they encountered yet two more Latino drivers pulled over further down the highway. As Hernandez took photographs of the fourth and fifth Latinos stopped on the roadside, Rodriguez concentrated on obeying the speed limit and traffic laws to avoid being pulled over himself.
Despite Rodriguez' precautions, a California Highway Patrol vehicle started to follow his car and eventually pulled him over. The officer told Rodriguez he had been stopped because his vehicle had touched the centerline and he had not turned on his headlights in an area where it is encouraged.
No consent for search When the officer told Rodriguez he was going to search the car for weapons, Rodriguez refused to give his consent on grounds that the officer had no probable cause to proceed.
"He ordered me out of the car and searched the car without my permission," Rodriguez said later. "The officer then checked out my license, my passenger's license and my insurance papers, and after 10 minutes, he ordered us back into the car. We sat waiting for 20 more minutes... and then finally, he told us we could go. He didn't issue me a ticket because I didn't do anything wrong."
Marcos Contreras, statewide director of the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), explained that Rodriguez' experience of being singled out for a traffic stop only because he matched a certain racial profile is nothing unusual for many black and Latino motorists across the country.
"The stories repeat themselves over and over," he told The Light. "What we're really talking about here is racism by law enforcement. People are being stopped and detained only because of their color. It is totally unacceptable and totally unjustifiable."
'Driving while black' Instances of law officers using racial profiling in traffic stops - a practice termed "driving while black or brown" or "DWB" by civil libertarians - have by some statistics risen dramatically in many parts of California and the rest of the country in recent years. A Gallup poll released last December found that nearly three-quarters of black men ages 18 to 34 felt that they had been stopped on the road by law enforcement simply because of their race.
A comparison poll of blacks and whites of all ages revealed that more than four out of 10 blacks felt they were victims of racial profiling, compared to fewer than one out of 10 whites. In addition, roughly six out of 10 blacks who said they had been stopped because of their race, said it had occurred three or more times.
Contreras of LULAC believes that Latinos in California are especially vulnerable to racial profiling, and noted many of them are reluctant to report the incidents out of fear of retribution. "The number of Latinos who are detained and have their cars searched is grossly disproportionate compared to Anglo drivers," he said. "All people should be treated equally. But it's very difficult to get the data to prove there is a problem."
Claims of widespread abuse From testimonials he has heard through his organization and at a series of statewide town meetings conducted by the Racial Justice Coalition - a cooperative San Francisco-based project of civil liberties groups including LULAC and the American Civil Liberties Union - Contreras believes that the practice is widespread. "We have cases involving the CHP, local sheriff's departments, and local police departments," he said.
While the small amount of hard evidence suggests the practice is most prevalent in urban areas with sizable populations of black and Latino residents, minorities in rural areas like West Marin often drive in fear of being pulled over for DWB.
Victor Reyes of Novato, a Light columnist and former West Marin resident, believes that while he's seen no obvious pattern of racial profiling in West Marin, Latinos - many of whom are blue-collar workers and immigrants - are often considered suspect in a county where wealth is the norm.
"It's not a secret here in Marin that if you're driving a car that is beat-up and not good looking, you're more likely to get pulled over," he said.
Cultural differences Reyes explained that cultural norms that are acceptable south of the border but not in the US - such as driving with an open container of beer or with a large group of people crowded in a single vehicle - can also make Latinos in Marin easy targets for questioning by law enforcement. "Some of them drink and drive," he said, "which is not such a big issue in Mexico...
"And it's not common here to see a car full of people," Reyes added. "But many Latinos do that during their commute, especially on the Point Reyes-Petaluma Road. It makes them look different."
Bruce Graham, an Inverness resident who last year was forcibly held at gunpoint by police in a Petaluma supermarket without any probable cause, recently told The Light that while he has seen evidence of racial profiling, it does not appear to be widespread in West Marin.
"I've been pulled over a couple of times for minor things by the highway patrol," said Graham, who is black. "A missing tail light, or a missing front license plate. Once I was pulled over by the sheriff's department, but the officer was really very nice to me."
Marin County Sheriff Bob Doyle explained that his department has a strict policy against racial profiling and making unwarranted traffic stops. "We're not doing it and I don't allow it," Doyle said. "It's simply against the law to do racial profiling."
No pattern in West Marin Doyle said his deputies are well-trained in matters of racial diversity, and have not engaged in any behavior that has prompted him to be concerned about illegal stops of Latinos or blacks.
"No one has ever accused our organization of stopping or profiling someone strictly because of color. When someone is stopped for something, there has to be a violation," he said. (Doyle did acknowledge that his department has been accused on a few occasions of specifically targeting drug buyers in Marin City.)
While cases of racial profiling in Marin are clearly isolated, the 1998 Rodriguez incident proved to be a pivotal point in the recognition of a problem with DWB traffic stops in other parts of California. A year after the incident, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a federal lawsuit on his behalf against the two agencies involved - the California Highway Patrol and the state Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement- alleging a pattern of race-based traffic stops.
Operation Pipeline The ACLU claims that the Rodriguez incident was not only in itself a violation of the motorist's civil rights, but was also part of a larger federal drug fighting effort that primarily targets blacks and Latinos. Called Operation Pipeline, the program used federal tax dollars to fund a nationwide effort to step up drug-related arrests by training some 27,000 law officers to single out particular motorists, typically blacks, Latinos, and other minorities, for minor offenses and subsequently ask for their consent in a search of their vehicle.
The ACLU alleges that the CHP has been especially aggressive in implementing Operation Pipeline. The organization claims that in 1997 alone, the CHP - as part of the federal project - stopped nearly 34,000 people - but found less than two percent of them were actually carrying drugs. Backing the organization up was a 1999 report by the now-defunct state Joint Legislative Task Force on Government Oversight, which said 80 to 90 percent of all motorists stopped in the CHP's drug interdiction campaign were minorities, and only 10 percent of arrested motorists were white.
CHP's response The ACLU last November added additional plaintiffs to its lawsuit as well as more allegations that racial profiling was being used as part of Operation Pipeline. In response, CHP Commissioner Dwight Helmick denied that officers were trained to engage in racial profiling. "As I have said many times, the CHP has never condoned racial profiling, and our policy specifically prohibits this activity," Helmick said.
Helmick has also noted that the CHP on its own last October began promptly collecting racial data from traffic stops, after Gov. Gray Davis the month prior signed an executive order mandating that the CHP (but not sheriff's and police departments) should collect such data for three years.
CHP last month submitted the first results of their collection to Davis' office, and the report is expected to be released to the public within the next month. In April, Helmick said early indications reveal no pattern of racial discrimination in traffic stops, and even suggested that Anglos were the only group that may be getting stopped in disproportionate numbers.
But Governor Davis himself has come under fire from the ACLU and other groups for his executive order, which he issued only after he became the first governor in the country to veto legislation barring racial profiling.
State Senator stopped In 1998, after state Senator Kevin Murray of Los Angeles was pulled over and questioned by Beverly Hills police for no apparent reason other than he was black, he initiated a bill that would have required California law enforcement officers to collect data on every motorist they stop. The governor countered that he believed law enforcement agencies should collect data voluntarily and only where it seemed necessary.
Last April, after Murray introduced a follow-up bill to combat racial profiling, SB 1389, Davis negotiated with Murray to have the data-collection element of the bill eliminated.
Instead, Davis signed a watered-down version of the bill requiring more training of peace officers and requiring them to give identification cards to people they pull over but do not arrest or cite. Although his executive order mandating that CHP collect racial data would remain in effect, it would last only until 2002.
Several major law enforcement groups had opposed mandatory data collection and lobbied Davis' office on the issue. Sheriff Doyle told The Light that the California State Sheriff's Association was opposed to mandatory data collection largely because the process is so time consuming. Collecting and processing data automatically through a computer network - as is done in San Jose - is much more efficient - but it's costly, he explained.
Bill 'a fraud' After publicly blasting the dilution of SB 1389, Michelle Alexander, director of the Racial Justice Coalition, in June spoke out again against the bill. "The current racial profiling bill is a fraud," Alexander said. "Giving business cards to victims of racial profiling is like offering aspirin to cancer patients. Data collection is an essential first step in addressing racial profiling."
Contreras of LULAC agreed, calling upon Davis to require greater collection of data. "The current bill is the weakest racial profiling bill in the country," he said. Earlier this month, two black Congressional representatives, John Conyers and Maxine Waters, also urged Davis to revisit his veto of the data collection bill, noting that seven states have enacted such legislation.
In his defense, Davis has pointed out that approximately 55 police and sheriff's departments statewide have begun or agreed to voluntarily collect ethnicity data. Among them are Alameda County, Solano County, Oakland, San Francisco, San Jose, and Berkeley.
Not all results of the monitoring effort have proved encouraging. Last December, the city of San Jose released a preliminary report on three months worth of traffic stops by police. Although blacks and Latinos represent roughly 35 percent of the city's population, they accounted for 50 percent of the traffic stops.
'Guilty of something' Inverness' Graham recently summed up his feelings of being a person of color in a country where law enforcement often looks at minorities with suspicion.
"All of my life I felt that I was guilty of something. It's the way they stare at you sometimes," he said. "As an African-American or a person of color, you come to expect being looked at and treated differently."