Racial Profiling

Maryland's highest court heard arguments Friday on whether the Maryland State Police must give its internal records to the NAACP to show how the police investigated drivers' complaints that troopers practiced racial profiling. The organization has sought the records under the state's Public Information Act since 2007, after reports showed that police found none of five years' worth of "driving while black" complaints valid. "We just want to make sure they are taking these complaints seriously.

Maryland's highest court has ruled that the state police must give the NAACP access to internal affairs files on racial profiling complaints. The civil rights group had requested the documents under the Maryland Public Information Act but the police agency denied the request, saying the records were protected personnel files. The Maryland Court of Appeals rejected that argument, agreeing with a Baltimore County court that the information could be shared if identifying information is redacted.

WASHINGTON -- Gov. Parris Glendening, the newly elected leader of the National Governors' Association, announced last week that he will sponsor a bill during the next General Assembly session to combat "racial profiling," the police practice of using race as a factor in deciding which motorists to stop or search. I'm not impressed. Actions speak louder than words, and the actions (or should I say inaction) of Mr. Glendening and Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend reveal that eradicating racial profiling is not really one of their priorities.

The U.S. is badly in need of immigration reform, and if the case hadn't been made sufficiently by President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney's dueling views of the matter last week, the nation's highest court has now weighed into the debate, too. In striking down three of four challenged sections of Arizona's anti-illegal immigration law on a 5-3 vote (with Justice Elena Kagan recused), theU.S. Supreme Court has chosen to side with the Obama administration on everything but what many saw as the most controversial aspect of the 2010 law - the provision that allows police officers to check the immigration status of people they stop.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland is asking a Baltimore County Circuit Court judge to order the Maryland State Police to provide documents about how they investigate complaints of racial profiling and what kind of disciplinary actions have been taken against troopers in response to those complaints. The request for summary judgment was filed in court late Thursday, Meredith Curtis, a spokeswoman for the civil rights organization, said yesterday. The ACLU of Maryland filed a lawsuit on behalf of the Maryland State Conference of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People against the state police in September, alleging that the law enforcement agency is withholding information on how complaints of racial profiling are investigated and is charging excessively for records requested under the Maryland Public Information Act. The ACLU says that black and Hispanic motorists are stopped by troopers at a disproportionate rate.

HERE'S THE SKINNY on racial profiling, the alleged police practice in which members of certain ethnic groups are targeted by law enforcement for no other reason than being a member of that ethnic group.Rank-and-file law enforcers do use racial profiling, the assertions of police chiefs across the country to the contrary notwithstanding. Several officers spoke up in Jeffrey Goldberg's June 20 New York Times Magazine article "What Cops Talk About When They Talk About Race," and their comments were quite revealing.

THROUGHOUT THE years, the topic of racial profiling has brought a lot of controversy. Some observers allege that it doesn't exist; others dismiss such complaints as the exaggeration of hypersensitive minorities. But President Bush reported in his February 2001 address to Congress that he had directed Attorney General John Ashcroft "to develop specific recommendations to end racial profiling. It is wrong, and we must end it." Historically, race and immigrant status are what tend to distinguish trivial misdeeds from official crimes, and bad crimes from intolerable ones.

THE NEWS ABOUT racial profiling in New Jersey came as no surprise to me. One day several years ago, I was driving my brother to college and was traveling on the New Jersey Turnpike. A young, white state trooper followed us for more than a mile and then pulled us over to the side of the road. We were driving the speed limit. My brother asked the officer why he had stopped us. "You were changing lanes too fast," he replied, and gave us a speeding ticket. I was angry, but under no illusion that my Harvard alumni bumper sticker would immunize my brother and me from racial profiling.

Police departments throughout Maryland have turned to data collection from traffic stops to answer accusations of racial profiling, but a study released yesterday says that police may be leaning too heavily on the practice. "It's like data collection has become the default response to racially biased policing -- if you care about it, you will collect data," said Lorie Fridell, primary author of the 160-page report, "Racially Biased Policing: A Principled Response." "But we have limited ability to make any sense of the data right now."

THE DIALLO jury was asked the wrong question. They were asked to consider whether the New York police officers responded appropriately to a perceived threat. What they should have been asked is why Amadou Diallo was stopped in the first place. What we should all consider is what this tragedy says about policing in America. We are a nation established upon the principles of freedom, equality, justice and humanity -- yet a majority of Americans believe that if you are a minority, you are more likely to be stopped by the police or become the victim of police brutality.

I applaud Sen. Ben Cardin's efforts to end racial profiling: Nothing is more divisive than to bring an "us against them" mentality into law enforcement ("Candidates make final push before Tuesday," April 2). What could be more demoralizing and dehumanizing than being judged by the color of your skin or the clothes you wear? Racial profiling, by definition, is incompatible with the guarantee of equal protection under the law contained in the 14th Amendment of the Constitution. Yet, many of the same people who claim to be strict constructionists with regard to the Constitution are in favor of denigrating one of its most basic tenets.

Recently, Sen. Ben Cardin proclaimed in that "we must put an end to racial profiling" and held a press rally along with sending out e-mails. I disagree with his position. We cannot afford to be unrealistic about who or what we are looking at to protect our American freedoms. That's how we end up with Transportation Security Administration agents frisking children and grandmas without any suspicion that they might be doing something wrong. We don't have enough police or the time to screen every member the public.

Maryland's highest court heard arguments Friday on whether the Maryland State Police must give its internal records to the NAACP to show how the police investigated drivers' complaints that troopers practiced racial profiling. The organization has sought the records under the state's Public Information Act since 2007, after reports showed that police found none of five years' worth of "driving while black" complaints valid. "We just want to make sure they are taking these complaints seriously.

National journalism groups have weighed in at the Court of Appeals in a high-profile dispute over whether the Maryland State Police should turn over to the Maryland NAACP files showing how the agency handled five years' worth of complaints of racial profiling in traffic stops. The NAACP's effort to see the internal police documents has drawn a brief from the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, joined by the Society of Professional Journalists. The national NAACP had also filed a brief in support of the state NAACP.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland is asking the FBI in Baltimore to turn over information regarding the agency's collection of racial and ethnic data. Maryland's ACLU branch, along with dozens of other chapters across the country, filed a Freedom of Information act on Tuesday against local and state bureaus of the FBI. The requests come after a 2008 FBI operations guide said agents have the authority to collect information and map so-called "ethnic-oriented" businesses, behavior, lifestyle characteristics and cultural traditions in communities with concentrated ethnic populations.

The debate over  Arizona's mean-spirited (and probably unconstitutional) immigration law — and the Obama  Justice Department's lawsuit seeking to overturn it — is starting to hit home here in Maryland. Gov. Martin O'Malley will co-chair a National Governors Association panel on homeland security and public safety issues with none other than Gov. Janice K. Brewer of Arizona, champion of that state's new law that encourages police to check the immigration status of people they arrest.

Maryland's highest court has agreed to decide whether the NAACP should be allowed to see state police records of how the agency handled five years of motorists' complaints of racial profiling, none of which the agency found to be valid. The Court of Appeals could upend a lower court ruling in the long-running "driving while black" dispute that ordered the disclosure of documents in about 100 complaints or could uphold it and allow the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People to see the internal police records that the organization has been seeking since 2007.

The End Racial Profiling Act (ERPA) will soon be reintroduced by Rep. John Conyers, Democrat of Michigan, and Sen. Russ Feingold, Democrat of Wisconsin. Numerous incidents throughout American history have taught us that racial profiling not only fails as a law enforcement tool but ultimately makes us all less safe. Passage of ERPA would be an important step toward ending racial profiling. Over a century ago, Leon Czolgosz walked up to President William McKinley with a concealed weapon and shot him. The Secret Service agent assigned to search the president's visitors was focused on a "dark complexioned man" in line behind Czolgosz.