Controversial Law Increases Deportations (in National News) Indian Americans in Silicon Valley Raise Over $1 Million for Democrats (in Bay Area News) Asia's Unresolved Economic Issues (in Business) New Film Gemini's Double Pleasures (in A&E) Emil Amok (in Opinion)

‘Driving While Black’ May Be More Than Myth

Landmark study shows San Diego Police more likely to stop blacks, Latinos

By Associated Press

San Diego Police Department officers are more likely to stop and search blacks and Latinos than whites and Asian Americans, according to a landmark study.

Researchers hired by the department found that whites and Asian Americans had an 8 percent chance of being pulled over in traffic stops during the first six months of this year. Blacks and Latinos had a 14 percent chance of being stopped, according to results released Sept. 28.

“This is no surprise to us; we live this reality every day,” said Sydney Etheridge, president of San Diego’s Coalition of African American Organizations.

Police Chief David Bejarano, the city’s first Latino chief, ordered the $100,000 study last year after complaints that officers stop blacks and Latinos for minor infractions that would be overlooked if committed by a white or Asian American person.

The study was the first of its kind by a big-city police agency.

At a news conference Sept. 28, Bejarano promised further investigation but said he’s seen nothing so far to make him believe his 2,100 officers are acting improperly. “There are a lot of questions we need to answer,” Bejarano said. “If there are problems, we want to make sure we address them with training, supervision and, if necessary, discipline.”

Allegations of racial profiling by police have become a volatile political issue in the last year. At the urging of U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno, dozens of police departments across the country are gathering ethnic statistics on people who are stopped and searched. But law enforcement leaders including Los Angeles Police Chief Bernard C. Parks and Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca have refused to ask their officers to gather such data.

Some police unions have also resisted racial profiling studies, but officials with the San Diego Police Officers Association backed the study, saying the department had nothing to hide.

The study was based on data collected by officers during 91,552 traffic stops in the first six months of the year. Researchers compared the ethnicity of the people stopped with the numbers of driving-age people in each ethnic group.

The researchers used 1990 U.S.Census figures to determine the number of driving-age people in San Diego. However, the Census has been criticized for undercounting minorities, and as a border city San Diego has many drivers from Mexico, so the study could be skewed by using a low number for the percentage of Latino drivers, Bejarano cautioned.

Gov. Gray Davis last year vetoed a bill that would have required law enforcement agencies to keep ethnic data on traffic stops, saying decisions about gathering such statistics are best left to the local agencies.