Racial Profiling

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.

One of Maryland's most powerful lawmakers is planning a push to repeal the unwritten law against "driving while black" -- an effort that could put the General Assembly and Gov. Parris N. Glendening on the spot during the legislative session that begins today. Del. Howard P. Rawlings, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, plans to introduce some of the strongest legislation in the nation to ban the police practice of "racial profiling" -- using ethnicity as a factor in deciding whom to stop and whom to search.

While police chiefs and policy makers gave their overwhelming support yesterday to a bill that would track police traffic stops, Jamal Scruggs put a human face on the issue known as racial profiling. Scruggs, a psychology major at Howard University, told the House Commerce and Government Matters Committee that he was stopped twice in two months by police who said they thought he was driving a stolen car. Scruggs, who is African-American, assured the officers that the car was his. "It was really scary to me, having all these police officers with guns on me," said Scruggs, 19. The racial profiling bill is aimed at discouraging police from using a person's race or ethnic background as a basis for stopping them.

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."

All the world was watching on Tuesday, April 11 when President Clinton traveled to Annapolis, the state capital closest to the White House, to witness history as Gov. Parris N. Glendening signed the law making Maryland the first state to require built-in safety locks on handguns. But while the latest round in the hotly debated battle over gun control focused attention on the work by the governor and the Maryland General Assembly, some of Maryland's African-American legislators found themselves embroiled in a different battle.

The Maryland Senate unanimously approved yesterday legislation that would require police departments to adopt rules aimed at barring their officers from using race as a basis for making traffic stops. Black legislators and Gov. Parris N. Glendening applauded the 46-0 vote on the bill to address the practice known as racial profiling. The House of Delegates has passed a similar measure, and final General Assembly approval is considered certain. "This is a very strong statement by Maryland of the importance of police officers not to engage in racial profiling," said Del. Howard P. Rawlings, a Baltimore Democrat.

Prompted by internal debate and concerns about its image, the Baltimore County Police Department has decided to go beyond the requirements of the state's new racial profiling law in compiling data on traffic stops. The law, which will take effect Jan. 1, requires Maryland law enforcement agencies to keep statistics on who is being stopped, why and the outcome of the stop. Stops made at checkpoints or through the use of radar need not be reported. But Baltimore County and several other jurisdictions, including Howard County, will report data on stops made with radar and VASCAR, a speed-measuring system.

NEW YORK - A federal investigation of the New York Police Department's Street Crime Unit has determined that its officers engaged in racial profiling in recent years as they conducted their aggressive campaign of street searches in the city, officials said. Federal prosecutors in Manhattan, who began their investigation in the weeks after the 1999 shooting death of Amadou Diallo, are now in talks with the administration of Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani to discuss their findings and perhaps to negotiate a set of changes that would avert a lawsuit, the officials said.

The American Civil Liberties Union argued in federal court yesterday that Annapolis' loitering law is unconstitutional and, if enforced, could lead to racial profiling by police. In a two-hour hearing in U.S. District Court in Baltimore, attorneys for the city defended the ordinance, which was narrowly passed by the city council in October 1999. The law, which is not being enforced pending resolution of the ACLU's lawsuit, allows police to instruct people to "move along" if officers believe they are exhibiting behavior indicating drug-related activity in established drug-loitering-free zones, and arrest them if they do not comply.

A top police commander retired abruptly yesterday amid accusations of racial profiling for recently urging officers to stop "every black male" late at night at a bus stop where a rape occurred. The Feb. 22 directive by Maj. Donald E. Healy, commander of the Northeastern District, came to light yesterday during a morning radio talk show and prompted angry criticism from the city's black leaders, at least one of whom phoned Mayor Martin O'Malley demanding Healy's removal. "I'm deeply sorry if I offended any citizens," said the 52-year-old Healy, who is white, in a statement released by police at a hastily called news conference after he met with Commissioner Edward T. Norris.