About | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline
LOG IN
LOG IN

64 Guild Prac. 17 (2007)
A Path to Curbing Racial Profiling: An Overview and a Call to Action

handle is hein.journals/guild64 and id is 25 raw text is: SHAUNA CURPHEY & ALEJANDRO QUERA A PATH TO CURBING RACIAL PROFILING: AN OVERVIEW AND A CALL TO ACTION In early March of 2006, Portland Mayor Tom Potter told a Somali immi- grant who had been stopped four times in 18 months that the police actions smacked of racism.' More egregious cases have come to the attention of the Northwest Constitutional Rights Center in recent months: in one case, a young African American male had been pulled over nearly 20 times in less than two years--and three times on a single day. The purported reason for the stops, according to police reports, were minor traffic violations, such as failing to signal a turn or having the front tires of his vehicle in the pedestrian crosswalk. Citywide statistics have revealed that these are not isolated cases of racial profiling by the Portland police. The Portland Police Bureau recently released traffic stops data for 2004 and 2005. In the traffic stops in both years, African Americans and Hispanic/Latino drivers were overrepresented. Thirteen percent of the total number of stops in each year were of drivers who were African Americans, despite the fact that African Americans constitute only about 6 percent of the Portland population.2 By contrast, whites make up about 79 percent of the population but were stopped in only 69 percent of the traffic stops in 2005. Moreover, African Americans and Latinos/Hispanics were twice as likely to be searched during the stops as whites, despite the fact that whites were found to have contraband more often than either minority group. (Police found contraband in 10 percent of the stops of white drivers, compared to 8 percent of the stops of African American driv- ers and 7.3 percent of the stops of Latino/Hispanic drivers.)3 Unfortunately, recent statewide research has revealed similar trends through- out Oregon. For example, 30 percent of Hispanics and 40 percent of African Americans in Oregon reported one or more traffic stops by police in the past year, compared to only 20 percent of Caucasians who reported one or more stops. Moreover, 21 percent of African American respondents reported being stopped by police two or more times within the past 12 months compared to only 6 percent of other respondents from the same geographical area. Finally, 40 percent of Hispanics and 73 percent of African Americans said that they Shauna Curphey is the Northwest Constitutional Rights Center's fellow attorney. Alejandro Queral is the Center's executive director. For more information about the Northwest Constitutional Rights Center or to make a donation, please contact Mr. Queral at aqueral@ nwcrc.org, or visit www.nwcrc.org. This article first appeared in Civil Rights, the newsletter of the Oregon State Bar Civil Rights Section in September 2006.

What Is HeinOnline?

HeinOnline is a subscription-based resource containing thousands of academic and legal journals from inception; complete coverage of government documents such as U.S. Statutes at Large, U.S. Code, Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations, U.S. Reports, and much more. Documents are image-based, fully searchable PDFs with the authority of print combined with the accessibility of a user-friendly and powerful database. For more information, request a quote or trial for your organization below.



Short-term subscription options include 24 hours, 48 hours, or 1 week to HeinOnline.

Purchase Access

Contact us for annual subscription options:

Contact Us

Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?

Log In

profiles profiles most