By Christine Armario, Staff writer
Suffolk police have begun recording the race of many stopped for routine traffic violations in an effort to gather data about whether cops are profiling residents by race, officials said.
Along with a driver’s license plate number, vehicle description and other information, officers in two dozen Suffolk patrol units along the Long Island Expressway and Sunrise Highway have been asked to make a visual determination about the motorist’s race and record it in their report.
At first glance, it may seem to include the elements of racial profiling itself. But County Executive Steve Levy, who is expected to announce the program today, says the initiative will enable police to track the practice if it occurs, and counter accusations with data if it does not - in hopes of building trust with minority communities.
“It’s certainly not the policy of the Suffolk County Police Department to racially profile and our officers are specifically trained not to,” Police Commissioner Richard Dormer said. “But as a modern police agency, we should be able to prove that.”
Until now, the department has had no means of substantiating quantitatively whether their officers gave more tickets to those of a particular race. And it is a question that has arisen, said Paulette Bartunek, executive director of the Human Rights Commission, which approached the police department with the idea.
“The commission doesn’t receive a lot of reports about this from individuals, but I think there’s always been a perception in the community as a whole that this is something that’s a problem,” Bartunek said.
Neighboring counties and states have begun similar tactics.
Nassau police began noting an individual’s race on all field stops in June 2004, Det. Lt. Kevin Smith said. Their data were not immediately available.
Smith said that to his knowledge, no officers had been referred to internal affairs for investigation in connection with racial profiling. And, he said, with officers routinely recording the races of whom they stop, “it’s first and foremost on their mind that they have to be fair.”
More highly publicized was the state-mandated monitoring in New Jersey after two state troopers were charged with shooting three minorities on the New Jersey Turnpike in 1998. The former attorney general later said racial profiling was practiced in the state.
“Out here it’s not as bad as in some places,” said Yvonne Patterson-Quirk, president of the Islip Town NAACP. But, she said, “just because we don’t hear about it doesn’t mean it’s not going on. Not everyone will report things that will happen to them ... sometimes out of fear, sometimes out of ignorance.”
The initiative began about two months ago and will continue for the next six to 12 months, Dormer said. The 24 patrol cars in the pilot will record the race of everyone they stop. They will do so without informing the individual, deciding on their own which of six racial or ethnic categories they fit into: Asian, black, Hispanic, white, Middle Eastern or mixed heritage.
“We think it would be inappropriate,” Dormer said of asking motorists their races. “If an officer stops someone for a traffic violation, it’s a very stressful situation anyway. We think the data will be accurate enough. This is the way it’s collected in other police departments.”
The San Jose, Calif., Police Department was one of the first departments in the nation to voluntarily track racial profiling in 1999, said Sgt. Nick Muyo, a public information officer. Muyo said their officers typically note a person’s race in the same manner as the Suffolk pilot program.
“If an officer is racially profiling someone, he’s profiling them, at least from a car-stop standpoint, on how they look, not if he knows,” Muyo said.
San Jose’s population is 55.5 percent white, 29.5 percent Asian and 2.1 percent black, with 31.7 percent also identifying themselves as of Hispanic origin, according to 2004 Census data. In Suffolk, 84.3 percent of resident are white, 7.1 percent black and 3.2 percent Asian, with 12.4 percent also reporting that they are of Hispanic origin.
“It’s just another measure of trust,” Muyo said of the monitoring, “so that when different groups ask for the numbers ... they can see.”
When the pilot is complete, the department will present its findings to the Human Rights Commission and reach out to communities to discuss the data, Dormer said.
They will then decide whether to institute the program department-wide.
While supporting the initiative, some civil rights advocates have raised questions. “I think it’s a good idea, but I wonder just how accurate the police officers are actually going to be,” Patterson-Quirk of the NAACP said. “They pull someone over and they’re supposed to put it in some sort of machine. Who’s to say they’re going to put the truth?”
How the numbers will be interpreted will be another debate in itself.
The data has to be put in the context of the demographics of the community. And, Muyo warned, it’s not as simple as comparing the size of the racial group with the proportion of traffic stops they experience.
“There’s a lot of different factors that go into it,” Muyo said.
Copyright 2006 Newsday, Inc.
Newsday (New York)