Civil Rights Groups Ask Governor Blagojevich to End Consent Searches by Illinois State Police
Submitted by anonymous on July 24, 2008 - 4:13pm
Civil Rights Groups Ask Governor Blagojevich to End Consent Searches by Illinois State Police
- A diverse group of Illinois civil rights organizations today called on Governor Rod Blagojevich to bar the practices of “consent searches” during routine traffic stops by the Illinois State Police. The request emerges from a report analyzing data collected by the Illinois Department of Transportation from law enforcement agencies across the State of Illinois pursuant to a state law aimed at combating racial profiling. The data collected for calendar year 2007 demonstrates that police officers continue to request permission to search the automobiles of drivers of color far more often than white drivers, and that these searches of minorities are far less productive than consent searches of whites.
The report, prepared by the Northwestern University Center for Public Safety under the Illinois Traffic Stop Study Statistics Act, makes clear that consent searches remain problematic four years after the General Assembly first mandated that law enforcement agencies collect and report data on the race of drivers stopped and searched by police.
Joining the ACLU of Illinois in calling for an end to the practice of consent searches by the ISP were the following groups: the Rainbow Push Coalition, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, the NAACP Illinois Conference, the Council on American-Islamic Relations Chicago, the Illinois Coalition on Immigrant and Refugee Rights, the Chicago Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, and, Amnesty International - USA. The groups’ letter to the Governor notes that “after four years of study, the conclusion is obvious - consent searches are an invidious device that is a condition of inequality imposed on minority citizens on our roadways.”
A consent search occurs when law enforcement officials lack probable cause or even reasonable suspicion that criminal activity is occurring, yet nonetheless asks a civilian for permission to search their vehicle or person. Statewide data shows that during 2007, Hispanic drivers were more than twice as likely to be asked for permission to search their car after a routine traffic stop - and African American drivers were asked for permission three times more often. The State Police data was equally startling - with African American and Hispanic drivers being “consent searched” more than three times more often than whites. Data shows that drivers refuse permission for a consent search at about the same rate across racial lines - making clear that Black and Hispanic drivers are singled out for consent searches at a significantly higher rate than their white counterparts.
Most significant is the analysis of “hit rate” data collected for the first time in 2007. This new data shows that the consent searches targeting drivers of color yield markedly less contraband than searches of white drivers - making clear that there is an unjustified disparate impact on Blacks and Hispanics. Data shows that statewide police officers conduct consent searches of minorities 2.5 times more often than white drivers, but discover contraband at a rate one-half that of white drivers. The numbers are more dramatic for the ISP. ISP troopers ask for permission to search minority drivers more than three times as often as white drivers, but are nearly twice as likely to find contraband in a white motorist’s vehicle compared to a Black motorist’s vehicle, and eight times more likely to find contraband when searching a white driver compared to a Hispanic driver.
The civil rights groups said that the data makes clear that Governor Rod Blagojevich should bar the ISP from conducting consent searches.
“With a single executive order, Governor Blagojevich can end this practice that is proven to be discriminatory,” said Harvey M. Grossman, Legal Director of the ACLU of Illinois. “The Governor not only can fix the policy. He can assure that minority drivers in Illinois no longer are targeted for humiliating, degrading roadside searches even though there is no evidence that they have broken any laws.”
The 2006 Annual Report of the Illinois Traffic Stops Statistics Study was issued by the Illinois Department of Transportation. Adopted by the General Assembly in 2003, the legislation requires all law enforcement agencies in Illinois to collect data on all traffic stops during the calendar year. The full report is available at www.dot.state.il.us/trafficstop/results.html.
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Why Not Just Stick to Picking on Whites?
I was reading the News-Gazette tonight and was not too surprised to see that their editorial board seemed to find no issue with cops asking minorities if they could be searched at rates twice or three times more often than whites are asked to, yet it is a fact that whites are twice as likely to be caught carrying contraband of some type.
Remember this is the same News-Gazette team that is OK with statistical proof when it's used to support reordering educational systems across the nation to ill-advisedly "teach to the test" in order to achieve increasingly mathematically improbable results under No Child Left Behind.
It's also the same News-Gazette that would be demanding privatization or contracting out of any other type of government work found having its workers wasting time getting half as much done while taking twice or three times as long to achieve the same work.
It's always rather odd to me how conservative forces of government that kill, maim, or imprison are always considered to be above reproach or any criticism of their inefficiency or morality by folks like the News-Gazette, while almost everything else that government does is inherently wasteful, shoddy, corrupt, or just plain old imprudent. Kinda strange how results-oriented and statistically-driven metrics are thrown out when it comes to certain sacred ground that conservatives want to protect at all costs from well-reasoned and thoughtful criticism.
I want to suggest a compromise in this particular instance though. It would still the voices of those who note the rather obvious racial inequities of the current situation. It would also still allow the unrestrained forces of law enforcement to wreak their havoc on the tiny fraction of 1% of motorists that these stops legitimately involve, while increasing the efficiency of these laggards of law enforcement who can't seem to analyze their way into more effective practices:
How about if the Illinois State Police restrict consent searches for the next five years solely to white motorists, who are twice as likely as all others to be carrying contraband?
Then we can all reassess the data and see how we feel as a society about this practice. Maybe we'll all feel a little different about it then.
But here's a clue Mssrs. Foreman, Beck, Kacich, and Dey. The "war on drugs" is a dismal failure that actually makes the Iraq war, pre- or post-"surge," look pretty good by comparison. Isn't the definition of insanity doing the same thing over and over, expecting a different result?
Yeah, that's right, it's kind of like a crack binge. You just might need some medical help with that, because I don't think prison is necessarily gonna help your problem. But I'm sure you're gonna feel good for the next few minutes, until the rush is over and you fire up your editorial pipe again.
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