Racial Profiling

The state Board of Public Works approved a settlement yesterday of a racial profiling lawsuit against the Maryland State Police, ending a legal battle that began a decade ago when an African-American lawyer was stopped by a trooper in Cumberland and his car searched for drugs. Under the terms of the settlement, state troopers must videotape traffic stops, document the race of each motorist they stop and search, and distribute brochures explaining motorists' constitutional rights. "After 10 years and far too much litigation ... we're going to put this behind us," Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. said yesterday.

Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. and the head of the Maryland State Police have agreed to settle the racial profiling lawsuit against the state, an agreement that advocates say could have nationwide implications and change the nature of traffic stops in Maryland. The Board of Public Works is scheduled to vote on the settlement Wednesday. Ehrlich delayed that vote when he took office so his administration could make changes in the proposed agreement, which was negotiated by the Glendening administration.

Maryland officials said yesterday they're prepared to settle the state's historic racial profiling lawsuit April 2. But lawyers representing minority motorists who claim state troopers stopped them solely on the basis of their race said they weren't quite ready to sign off on the deal. Although Comptroller William Donald Schaefer said he has reservations about the proposed agreement, Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. and Treasurer Nancy K. Kopp support a modified version of the consent decree proposed this year to settle the class-action lawsuit.

Maryland NAACP officials said yesterday that if the Board of Public Works does not vote on the proposed racial profiling settlement by March 19, they will scrap the agreement and proceed with their lawsuit. "This thing has been going on long enough," said Herbert H. Lindsey, president of the Maryland State Conference of NAACP Branches. "It needs to be moved on now." Lindsey is calling on the board, made up of Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr., Comptroller William Donald Schaefer and Treasurer Nancy K. Kopp, to vote at their next meeting on the consent decree that would settle the lawsuit.

Black lawmakers emerged from a closed-door meeting with Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. yesterday confident that a settlement in a decade-old racial profiling case would be resolved within a month. Cooperation among Ehrlich, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and African-American legislators will likely mean that state police Superintendent Edward T. Norris will be confirmed by the Senate today. Norris' nomination had been postponed by some senators troubled that the former Baltimore police commissioner might block a proposed settlement in a case alleging that state police improperly singled out black drivers for highway traffic stops.

IT'S TIME for Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. to exercise his leadership at a historic moment on an issue of national importance in Maryland. A racial profiling consent decree - agreed to by the Maryland State Police and the NAACP last fall after years of negotiations - should come before the state Board of Public Works in the near future and should be approved. The agreement is a state-of-the-art model of professional policing intended to support police officers in their efforts to end even unconscious racial bias in the very important work they do. A parade of studies over the past decade has demonstrated that racial profiling is a nationwide problem.

Two of the three members of the Maryland Board of Public Works have agreed to Gov.-elect Robert L. Ehrlich Jr.'s request to defer consideration of the state's historic settlement of a racial-profiling lawsuit until Gov. Parris N. Glendening has left office. The settlement between the Maryland State Police and Robert L. Wilkins, an African-American attorney who was pulled over and asked to consent to a drug search in 1992, was expected to be taken up at today's board meeting - the last at which Glendening will preside.

It's been a decade now since Robert L. Wilkins had his Rosa Parks moment. He and his family were driving home to Washington from a funeral in Chicago when a Maryland state trooper stopped them near Cumberland and asked to search their rental car. State police had been advised that drug dealers in the area were "predominantly black males and females" who favored rental vehicles. That was all the trooper had to go on when he pulled over a 29-year-old, Harvard-trained defense lawyer and his cousin, uncle and aunt to determine whether they were trafficking narcotics.

State officials are scheduled to vote next week on a settlement of a decade-old racial-profiling lawsuit against the Maryland State Police that would change the nature of traffic stops in Maryland and could set a nationwide precedent. Under the terms of the agreement, the state would develop a system for tracking and reviewing the race of motorists who are stopped, establish a police-citizen panel to hear concerns about racial-profiling and set up a statewide 800 telephone number for complaints.

Traffic-stop data released recently by the Annapolis and Anne Arundel County police departments have renewed a discussion about racial profiling in the community. Figures for early 2002 show that while traffic stops roughly paralleled the demographics of the city and county, black drivers were twice as likely as white drivers to be arrested during a stop by Annapolis police. The county chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People plans to ask the Annapolis Human Relations Commission to examine the arrest data for evidence of racial profiling, said Carl O. Snowden, an NAACP member and assistant to County Executive Janet S. Owens.