The mayor’s racial profiling committee seems to be reaching a
stalemate after the police union hired a statistical consultant who
says there’s no proof cops are engaging in the practice.
There has been much talk over issues such as whether racial
profiling exists,
but little action on what to do about it since
the committee was originally formed in January 2007.
The committee was originally asked to evaluate traffic and
pedestrian stop data; to recommend policy changes for eliminating
racial profiling; to monitor the implementation of policy
recommendations; to facilitate a dialog between police and the
community; and to monitor the implementation of the police bureau’s
plan to eliminate racial profiling. Sixteen months later, the committee
says it hopes to finally make policy recommendations to the city
council by August.
“I think it’s time for this committee to start producing results, or
we need to try a different tact,” says City Commissioner Sam Adams, who
has talked about the issue on the mayoral campaign trail. “My patience
is wearing very thin.”
Still, Portland Police Association boss Robert King seems in no
hurry to push the committee forward, and threw another wrench in the
works last Thursday, April 17, by bringing along Kansas-based
consultant Brian Withrow.
Withrow said there is no way to prove racial profiling is happening,
based on his analysis of 68,107 traffic stops from 2006. The traffic
stop data shows that African American drivers were 3.4 times more
likely than whites to be pulled over, and less likely to be carrying
contraband—but Withrow argued that more information is needed to
provide proof of an officer’s motive. He said asking an officer to rate
the seriousness of an alleged infraction before making a stop might be
one way to do that, so the community can ask, “Did African American
drivers get stopped for relatively minor things but get tickets?”
The presentation raised the hackles of some on the racial profiling
group. Co-chair Jo Ann Bowman, executive director of
Oregon
Action, said she feels like the traffic stop data gives a “snapshot of
what is happening at a given time,” adding, “as the community, if you
see these numbers, how could you not come to the conclusion that
something is going on?”
In its second year, the committee appeared to be rehashing the same
arguments that came up when Mayor Potter first raised the issue of
racial profiling at a council session in March 2006, telling Somali
immigrant Kayse Jama that his being stopped four times by police in 18
months “smacked of racism.” When asked if there could be alternate
explanations for Jama’s treatment, Potter said if something “walks like
a duck, quacks like a duck….”
Potter later apologized for “taking sides without knowing all the
facts,” then initiated a series of five community listening sessions,
which ultimately led to the formation of the committee.
Commissioner Adams, meanwhile, says he is encouraged the union
appears open to analyzing the data, and suggests expert consultants
might sit down with the committee members to go over the data and
methodology together. Others are less optimistic.
“As long as our racial profiling discussions are based on one side
insisting it exists, and one side insisting it doesn’t, then we’re not
going to move forward,” says John Campbell, the consultant who compiled
a report last September on the city’s controversial Drug-Free Zones,
showing African Americans were more likely to be excluded for the same
crimes than whites.
Campbell’s report lambasted the police bureau’s “lack of
intellectual curiosity,” after none of the theories proffered by the
police bureau for the disparities panned out in the statistical
analysis. Now, he says even if King could prove beyond doubt that there
was no such thing as racial profiling, there would still be another
problem to address.
“There is a measurable and stark division in community distrust of
the police between whites and African Americans,” he says. “I think
that is the problem, and that is where we really need to be focusing
our attention.”
Bowman says it feels like the committee is going back to the
beginning of its work. “King knew the outcome of Withrow’s report would
support his position,” she says. “Of course you can go and hire a
certified smart person to stand up for your position, but the police
union could have spent those dollars better by talking to people on the
streets who have experienced racial profiling for themselves.”
“The committee has been in a state of flux from the beginning,” says
King. ” Portland police do not engage in racial profiling, which
of course calls the very purpose of the committee into question.
“Nevertheless, the committee members have exchanged a lot of
information and perhaps we are listening to one another better than we
were,” King continues. “So the process has not been wasted.”
“We’re moving forward,” says Maria Rubio, the mayor’s public safety
policy director. “The data has always been inconclusive on this issue,
but this was identified as an issue by city council.”