Enrique Morales, Without Liberty and Justice for All

My best friend for his sixteenth--for his nineteenth birthday received a brand new BMW from his parents. Like any kid, he wants to take it out for a drive to show it off. I am one of the people he called up to go with him-- myself and two other friends. We ended up that day at a local mall. Went inside to shop and then, when we came outside, got in the car and we were driving off. Next thing you know we're surrounded by police, guns drawn, all of us forced out of the car and onto the floor.

Now you may be asking, "Well what did we do?" Did we steal something from the store? No. Did we cause trouble in the mall? No. Apparently what had happened is, at that particular mall, they were having problems with cars being stolen, and the description they had was that it was four Hispanics, which we just happened to be. So, seeing four Hispanics in a brand new BMW, they automatically assumed it was us.

What I have just explained to you is a common practice done by police known as racial profiling, or, on the street as driving while black or driving while brown. And my research shows that these incidents that I'm discussing are not atypical of America 's minorities.

Eleven members of this class are members of minority groups and minorities are not the only victims. One classmate, David, had long hair, drives an old Volkswagen wagon. He indicated that he was pulled over without explanation, just like me. Any starving student driving an old car is at risk for experiencing the joy of being treated guilty until proven innocent.

Today I would like to discuss the steps that need to be taken to promote colorblind policing.

To begin with, the problem of racial profiling needs to be fixed.

Racial profiling is a nationwide problem. Temple University professor of psychology John Lanbreth found that, in New Jersey, blacks are five times more likely to be stopped on the New Jersey turnpike than any other--than any others. In Maryland, 71.3 percent of those searched by state police on Interstate 95 were black.

This pattern is corroborated by Joseph McNamara, former police chief in San Jose, who notes on the Intellectual.com Issue of the Week, June 3, 1999, "Unfortunately, police are more suspicious of people of color. . . . Police are under pressure to produce good arrest statistics, thus they are tempted to cut corners by employing racial profiling."

One harm of racial profiling is [the] discriminatory treatment it inflicts on innocent citizens. White House aides, Nash and Kearney, two victims of racial profiling, explained in Jet magazine, October 16, 2000, that "until that moment, we had an intellectual understanding of the bogus crime of 'Driving While Black.' But, in a few terrifying moments, we felt it more deeply and more personally than any other words could convey."

My experience with racial profiling is similar. After checking my registration, one of the officers who pulled me over and said last May "we thought you were someone else." Well, that's always the case; they always think you're someone else. "Sorry about that." Of course, like anybody else, I was angry. Yeah, I wanted to lash out. I wanted to do what any normal person would do in that situation, but they had the batons, they had the guns, they had the handcuffs, so what could a person do?

Now that we have seen the need to curtail racial profiling, let's turn our attention to some solutions.

One remedy is that we should--police should keep accurate records of all the people they stop, and in the communities where--and enabling members to act--act where needed.

In Amnesty International Report on Race, Rights, and Police Brutality, September 1999, Attorney General Janet Reno's proposal to establish early warning systems to identify officers who engage in misconduct and provide for independent review of each department's performance is recognized as an important step.

Another step in curing the disease is a greater hiring of minority officers. A study done by John Donohue III of Stanford Law School and Steven Levitt of the University of Chicago, reported in Business Week, May 3, 1999, found that "the higher the share of the police officers of a particular race in a neighborhood dominated by the same race, the lower the number of arrests [of the people of that race] in that neighborhood." This article concludes by saying, "Own race policing appears to pay off by both reducing arrests and property crime—-presumably because it leads to fewer false arrests and a greater--and greater deterrence."

A third remedy that can be done is diversity training. Diversity training is a way to promote unbiased policing across all ethnic groups. George Rice, a ten-year Drug Enforcement Agency agent now working on community policing in the nonprofit sector, noted in Horizon magazine, December 1999: "For law enforcement personnel, training and experience are critical. . . Like everyone else, police must unlearn this bias and judge people based on their actions alone."

Hopefully none of you will ever be victimized by racial profiling. We have seen that this problem is widespread and that actions such as better records of traffic stops and diversity training can be taken to promote an America where driving while black or brown is no longer a crime. Thank you.