2008 Racial Profiling Numbers Released by IDOT

Once again, racial profiling numbers were released by the Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT) with no coverage in the local media. When I notified a journalist for the News-Gazette of the latest figures, he told me they covered the story several years ago. Racial profiling is apparently no longer an issue. Yet it became national news this summer when African American professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. was arrested for breaking into his own home. Locally, a young medical student, “Toto” Kaiyewu, was racially profiled by a police officer in nearby Villa Grove, followed, and led on a police chase that ended with police fatally shooting him on I-74.

This is the fifth year that statistics collected by IDOT have shown that minorities in the area are being racially profiled, yet no action has been taken by any of the local police departments. Due to legislation forwarded by then Illinois Senator Barack Obama, police departments throughout the state are now required to record detailed information from routine traffic stops and submit it to IDOT. It is then given to researchers at Northwestern University who compile the statistics and come up with what they call a “disparity index” indicating where racial profiling occurs. A ratio of 1:1 suggests that minorities and whites are pulled over equally given their percentage of the population according to census figures. The average disparity index throughout the state of Illinois is 1.10, slightly higher for minorities.

The most alarming information for 2008 shows that the disparity index for the Champaign County’s Sheriff’s Office jumped to 1.59 in 2008, up from 1.27 in 2007, and 1.02 in 2004 when IDOT began collecting the statistics. Despite efforts to reach him on the phone, Sheriff Dan Walsh would not respond to phone calls. An elected official, Walsh should explain why this significant increase.

For Urbana police, the figure was 1.49 (1.47 in 2007) and for Champaign police, who have a much worse reputation, it was 1.43 (1.34 in 2007). For the University of Illinois police it was 1.37 (1.36 in 2007).

These might seem like just numbers, but closer examination reveals certain patterns. In Urbana, there were 2,194 whites stopped and 1,831 minorities―a difference of only 363 stops, although minorities are only 30% of the population.

In Champaign, among so-called “consent searches” where police ask to search an individual’s car, there were 20 whites whose cars were searched, in comparison to 38 minorities who were searched―32 African Americans and 6 Hispanics.  Almost twice as many minorities had their cars searched.

Champaign County Sheriff’s deputies conducted consent searches among 4 white drivers and 10 minorities―9 African Americans and 1 Hispanic. Here, there were more than twice as many minorities searched for contraband. The ACLU of Illinois has called for an end to all consent searches because blacks and Hispanics turn out to be the ones most frequently targeted.

Among Asians, long regarded as the “model minority,” drivers were more likely to be given warning tickets than blacks or Hispanics. Among 631 stops of Asian drivers, the University of Illinois police issued 491 warnings. Both blacks and Hispanics were given citations more than half of the time they were stopped.

The police killing of Toto Kaiyewu on April 6, 2009 raised serious questions about racial profiling. Toto was an African American who was first spotted by police at a Super Pantry in Villa Grove, approximately 15 minutes southeast of Urbana. During an interview with Villa Grove police officer Adam Deckard conducted by Illinois State Police in an investigation that night, he said that he became “suspicious” when he saw a car with Texas plates (Toto was a student in Carbondale, Illinois, but was from Texas). Asked to explain, officer Deckard said, “I’m not trying to be prejudiced, but we have a lot of Mexicans in our town. So sometimes we get Texas plates in our town.” Although Toto was African American, the son of immigrant parents from Kenya, he was found to be “suspicious” because of the officer’s racist assumptions. There had been recently been large drug busts of Mexican drivers in the surrounding area.

Villa Grove Police Chief Dennis Gire has pointed to IDOT statistics claiming that his police do not racially profile. Indeed, the disparity index for Villa Grove police is only 1.05. Yet Villa Grove was once known as a “sundown town” where for decades blacks were not to be seen after dark. According to the 2000 census, Villa Grove is 98% white. Only 13 minorities were stopped there in 2008. There are simply very few of them in Villa Grove for police to pull over.

Despite the meteoric rise of one-time Illinois Senator Barack Obama, who became the first African American President of the United States, unfortunately the conditions for most blacks throughout the country has not changed. Not everyone can simply share a beer with the police and “agree to disagree,” the conclusion to the Gates scandal which still left the issue unresolved. We can have numbers to show racial profiling is a rampant problem, even headlines in the news, but until the people demand more accountability from their police, the slogans of real change ring hollow.

A full report of the 2008 IDOT study can be found online at:

http://www.dot.il.gov/travelstats/ITSS%202008%20Statewide%20and%20Agency...

BD