Racial Profiling in Texas?
Category: Local... Society & Culture...
Posted Wednesday, March 02, 2005 at 02:20 PM [GMT-6]

I really didn't want to get into this, but the media keeps putting the story front and center. If you live in Midland (and probably anywhere in Texas, for that matter) you've seen the reports on the just-released study of vehicle searches by city and state law enforcement officers. The study, which was commissioned by the ACLU of Texas, NAACP of Texas, LULAC of Texas and the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition, alleges that a disproportionately high percentage of racial minority-driven vehicles are being searched.

For example, according to the report, once a vehicle was stopped by a member of the Midland Police Department, it was 4.2 times as likely to be searched if the driver was black than if the driver was anglo. The vehicle was 1.7 times as likely to be searched if the driver was latino, as compared to anglo drivers. The numbers for the Midland County Sheriff's Department were 3.6 times (for blacks) and 1.4 times (for latinos) as great as for anglos.

The report also looked at the percentage of searches that were classified as "consent searches," meaning that there was no legal basis ("probable cause") for the officer to search the vehicle, but the officer asks for and receives the consent of the driver to conduct the search anyway. Again, according to the report, once a car was stopped by a Midland police officer, blacks were 4.4 times more likely to be subjected to a consent search than anglos, and latinos were 1.8 times more likely to be searched.

Now, on the surface these are some fairly damning statistics, much as we would like to explain them away due to our distaste for the politics and tactics of the organizations which sponsored the study.

But the question no one seems to be asking is why this study is being trumpeted as "new news"? After all, it was based on 2002 data, and a previous study (discussed on the Gazette in this post dated March 25, 2003 [you'll have to scroll down a bit to find it]) based on the same data showed more detail and a more credible overall picture of what's happening (including the relationship of arrests to stops and searches, a critical bit of data that's missing from the current study). What's more, a similar report was released by the same group of sponsors in 2004.

It seems to me that the ACLU, et al are simply trotting out the same data, selectively sifted to support a preconceived notion of reality. Until those groups come clean about their motives in providing such "research" and actually do some meaningful analysis on a complete and current set of data, there's no reason to afford them any credibility whatsoever.

[And, by the way...I'd also like to suggest to the KWES news crew that it's really important to choose your words carefully. The first sentence in the article on the station's website (and the script that the on-air reporters have been using) reads "A new report from American Civil Liberties Union shows Texas law enforcement officers are unfairly targeting minority motorists." A more accurate expression would be "A new report from American Civil Liberties Union alleges Texas law enforcement officers are unfairly targeting minority motorists." There's a world of difference.]