Racial Profiling

Saying that Maryland State Police are withholding information on how complaints of racial profiling are investigated -- and violating the public's right to government information -- the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit yesterday against the agency . The suit, filed in Baltimore County Circuit Court, alleges that the state police are improperly withholding records about any disciplinary actions taken in response to complaints of racial profiling...

Howard County police officials announced yesterday they will begin a program that will allow them to weed out officers who use race as a basis for traffic stops -- a step taken by no other department in the Baltimore area and by only a handful across the country.Police Chief Wayne Livesay said his purpose is to open a "dialogue" with the minority community and reassure it that he will not tolerate racial profiling as a means to fight crime."I am not naive enough to think these things [racial profiling]

BALTIMORE's elected leaders who support a "zero-tolerance" policy toward minor criminal offenses should stop for a moment and study the experiences of New York City and its extremely aggressive police force.Many police brutality incidents there -- including the shootings of unarmed citizens, all nonwhite, and sustained complaints by minorities of unrelenting harassment by policemen -- has created an explosive racial climate.New York's predicament was ignited by a racially incendiary mayor, Rudolph W. Giuliani, whose constant egging on of his police to step up their normal swagger, made a bad situation much worse.

Incidents of racism are still widespread -- even in upscale Howard County, several civil rights activists said yesterday.The warning emerged during a public meeting of the Maryland Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights at the county Office of Human Rights in the Columbia Gateway Building.From grievances within the local and state school system to accusations of racial profiling in shopping malls, several speakers invited to the hearing by the committee told panel members and an audience of about 30 people that the county is not as utopian as some would like to believe.

Stores say they lose billions of dollars a year to shoplifters. But they are finding that falsely accusing customers of stealing also can be costly -- in legal fees, negative publicity and potential damages.In recent weeks, two Baltimore-area teen-agers have filed separate lawsuits against two large retail chains, claiming they were accosted and detained by security guards who wrongfully said they were pilfering clothes.In one suit, Chenell Gardner, a 16-year-old East Baltimore girl, alleges that she was made to take off her outer blouse and empty her purse at the J. C. Penney Co. Inc. store in Eastpoint Mall by security guards who thought she had stolen a blouse but later acknowledged they made a mistake.

Howard County police officials announced yesterday they will begin a program that will allow them to weed out officers who use race as a basis for traffic stops -- a step taken by no other department in the Baltimore area and by only a handful across the country.Police Chief Wayne Livesay said his purpose is to open a "dialogue" with the minority community and reassure it that he will not tolerate racial profiling as a means to fight crime."I am not naive enough to think these things [racial profiling]

In an attempt to prevent racial profiling incidents involving Howard County police, County Executive James N. Robey is to announce today what he calls a "landmark" effort to talk about the touchy subject with African-American leaders."

A RANGE of tragic and bizarre events turned the '90s into a continuing seminar on race that nobody in the United States could help but attend.Racial profiling, the law-enforcement practice that has targeted blacks and Latinos for motor vehicle stops and subsequent humiliation and abuses, however, strikes closer to the heart of the everyday realities of being black or brown in America than the Los Angeles riots, O.J. Simpson or debates over affirmative action.Nevertheless,...

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.

Incidents of racism are still widespread -- even in upscale Howard County, several civil rights activists said yesterday.The warning emerged during a public meeting of the Maryland Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights at the county Office of Human Rights in the Columbia Gateway Building.From grievances within the local and state school system to accusations of racial profiling in shopping malls, several speakers, invited to the hearing by the committee, told panel members and an audience of about 30 people that the county is not as utopian as some would like to believe.

African-American motorists are three to four times more likely to be stopped by police on Maryland roads than other drivers, yet they are no more likely to be carrying drugs or contraband. That suggests a pattern of illegal racial profiling, and in 1998 the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the American Civil Liberties Union sued the Maryland State Police to stop the practice. The case was settled by a federal consent decree in 2003 after Maryland agreed to change some procedures and investigate drivers' complaints of racial profiling.

Despite a 15-year legal fight against racial profiling, Maryland NAACP leaders say they need to see Maryland State Police internal investigations of black motorists' complaints, amid concerns that the practice continues. "Of course racial profiling is going on," said Gerald Stansbury, president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Maryland State Conference. "There is a sense of that, yes." His remarks came as the state's second-highest court heard arguments Tuesday in the NAACP and American Civil Liberties Union's effort to see the 9,500 pages of documents in the internal state police investigations into complaints of racial profiling, and as those organizations maintained the racial disparity in traffic stops and searches has continued.

In the five years since Maryland State Police agreed to change procedures to settle accusations of racial profiling, about 100 motorists lodged complaints. Not one allegation contending that the practice occurred during traffic stops has been upheld in police internal investigations. On Monday, a dispute over records of those investigations landed in Maryland's second-highest court. Lawyers for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and American Civil Liberties Union argued that the public should be able to learn how those probes were handled, while an assistant attorney general countered that the documents are personnel records because even with troopers' identities blacked out, the officers can be identified.

There's but one plausible explanation for the arrest of 24 Hispanic men by federal immigration agents outside a Fells Point convenience store in 2007 - racial profiling. A recently released videotape and government documents detailing the incident provide a vivid look at how easily law enforcement can run amok when officers are only interested in making their numbers look good. The officers were agents of the U.S. Homeland Security Department's Immigration and Customs Enforcement division, and they were supposed to be looking for illegal immigrants who had been ordered to leave the country.

The NAACP can review Maryland State Police documents alleging racial profiling that the organization had been seeking, a judge ruled yesterday - a victory for the civil rights organization in a battle that has raged more than a decade. Baltimore County Circuit Judge Timothy J. Martin decided that a panel of three lawyers selected by the civil rights organization's Maryland conference will have 120 days to review the documents and select those they would like copied. The names of the officers and the complainants will be redacted from the copied documents.

Maryland has agreed to pay about $400,000 as part of a settlement of a decade-old federal lawsuit alleging that state troopers used racial profiling in deciding which drivers to pull over on Interstate 95. The agreement to end what had become known as the "driving while black" lawsuit was announced jointly yesterday by the state police and the American Civil Liberties Union, which filed the action in 1998. After the announcement, the settlement was approved by the state Board of Public Works.

The confirmation of Col. Terrence B. Sheridan as superintendent of the Maryland State Police has been stalled by black legislators unhappy with the agency's handling of racial issues. Yesterday, the Senate delayed until Wednesday a vote on Sheridan, who has been serving as superintendent of the 1,521-officer law enforcement agency since his appointment in May by Gov. Martin O'Malley. Sen. Verna L. Jones, a Baltimore Democrat and chair of the Maryland Legislative Black Caucus, said black lawmakers had asked for information on what progress has been made in diversifying the agency's personnel and on its handling of allegations of racial profiling among troopers making traffic stops.

In continuing litigation against the Maryland State Police over allegations of racial profiling, a lawyer for two civil rights organizations told a Baltimore County Circuit judge yesterday that the police agency should allow public inspection of racial complaints and records that show what the agency did to investigate them. "We're not looking for information about a particular trooper," Hector G. Bladuell, an attorney from the Venable law firm working for the American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland and the Maryland State Conference of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said during a hearing yesterday.

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.

Saying that Maryland State Police are withholding information on how complaints of racial profiling are investigated -- and violating the public's right to government information -- the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit yesterday against the agency . The suit, filed in Baltimore County Circuit Court, alleges that the state police are improperly withholding records about any disciplinary actions taken in response to complaints of racial profiling...