February 1, 2002
In the recent summary conviction appeal of R. v. Decovan Brown (released January 28, 2002, Ct. File No. 152/00), Justice Trafford of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice dealt with the very important issues of racial profiling and reasonable apprehension of bias. This judgment not only recognized the reality of racial profiling in our society but recognized the need for the courts to give latitude to counsel bringing forward applications based upon such an allegation.
The appellant was arrested for the driving offence of “over 80” after being pulled over by the police on the Don Valley Parkway in Toronto. The appellant is a young black male who was driving an expensive vehicle at the time of the incident. Throughout the investigation, the appellant was police and courteous to police.
The reasons for vehicle stop was the critical issue at trial. Defence counsel brought a s. 24 Charter application for an order excluding the breathalyzer results on the basis of a s. 9 Charter violation. The defence alleged that the appellant was arbitrarily stopped by the investigating officer due to racial profiling. It was argued that the arrest was based upon the stereotypical assumption that young black men who are driving expensive motor vehicles must be involved in some criminal activity. The officer maintained that the reason he effected a vehicle stop was because the appellant was speeding.
The trial judge dismissed the application without calling upon the Crown for submissions. A conviction was entered. Ultimately, the conduct of the trial judge became the subject of the appeal to the Ontario Superior Court of Justice. The issues raised on appeal included the following:
(1) that the trial judge misconceived the nature of racial profiling and the evidence required to establish it;
(2) that the trial judge conducted the trial in a manner that gave rise to a reasonable apprehension of bias;
(3) that the trial judge appeared to pre-judge the issues of the case; and
(4) that the trial judge’s comments about the application constituted an unwarranted deprecation of defence counsel and his role.
In his judgment, Trafford J. began his analysis by recognizing racial profiling as a reality that the courts cannot ignore. At paragraph 16, he stated “This [racial profiling] is a sensitive issue to a multicultural community such as Toronto.” At paragraph 17, he held that “Racism is a part of our culture and justice system.” However, he further acknowledged the difficulties in proving racial profiling in the criminal justice system: “racism, whether it be conscious or subconscious, will rarely, if ever, be proven directly. If it is to be proven in Court, it will be proven most often through circumstantial evidence.” [paragraph 17]
In light of these observations, Justice Trafford went on to comment on the importance of giving defence counsel the latitude necessary to bring forward these applications. At paragraph 18, he stated the following:
In my opinion, judges must be particularly vigilant in their efforts to impartially determine applications like this one. Ample scope must be given to counsel attempting to prove such an allegation. Interjections by trial judges in cases like this one to clarify evidence, to further the dialogue with counsel during submissions and to otherwise control the trial process must be undertaken with a keen sensitivity for the requirements of impartiality, the appearances of justice and the undeniable value of imposing just and appropriate sanctions against racism in the administration of justice where it is proven. A judge hearing any such application must be scrupulously aware of the need to maintain the public confidence in the ability of the Court to hear and determine such applications fairly.
After making these comments, Trafford J. then turned to the conduct of the trial judge in this case. First, he found the trial judge’s comments on sentencing to be completely inappropriate. On sentencing the judge indicated his distaste for the matters that were raised by the defence and requested that the accused apologize to the officer.
These remarks, according to Trafford J., created “an appearance of a mindset throughout the trial inconsistent with the duty to be impartial.” Trafford J. clearly stated that no defendant need apologize to anyone for an application brought by competent defence counsel where the application is of arguable merit. For a trial judge to remark that such an application was distasteful was viewed as a significant departure from his obligation to ensure the appearances of justice and the essential fairness of the trial. His Honour held that such a remark is materially inconsistent with the duty of the judge to hear and determine the application with an open mind.
It should be noted that in this case, Trafford J. held that the defence application was not frivolous, vexatious or otherwise devoid of legal merit. The defence had a significant amount of evidence to support the application. The evidence included an attack on the credibility of the investigating officer which was arguably supported by independent evidence, and the testimony of the appellant.
Second, Trafford J.’s also found the trial judge’s remarks during submissions problematic. Again, the trial judge revealed his distaste for the application by stating the following:
But is does concern me that you have made such serious allegations, really quite nasty, malicious, potentially, accusations based on, it seems to me, nothing and you are going to have to persuade me that there is some appropriate basis on which to make this kind of accusation about an alleged racist motivation on the part of the officer. I did not understand your client to say that he had any difficulty with the officers in the dealings that he had with them. He agreed that the officer’s evidence concerning the conversation they had was accurate. We saw the videotape. There did not seem to be any particular tension or hostility between the two when they were at the police station.
Trafford J. concluded that this remark arguably showed a failure not only to appreciate the material aspects of the evidence but it also showed a failure to appreciate the subconscious nature of racial profiling. While the trial judge did invite defence counsel to persuade him of the merit of his application, this was seen by Trafford J. as a hollow invitation.
Third, several remarks by the trial judge during cross-examination of the arresting officer viewed in the context of the trial as a whole, “appeared to show a failure to understand the importance of the evidence, a tendency to prejudge the merit of the application or an inclination to assist the officer at critical stages of cross-examination.”[para 22]
Finally, the trial judge also admonished the defence counsel for the tone of his voice in cross-examination of the arresting officer and remarked on the length of time of the application. While by themselves, these comments would not be sufficient to allow an appeal, in the context of the trial as a whole, Trafford J. found that they added to the appearances of injustice in this case.
After making the following remarks about the conduct of the trial judge, Trafford J. was satisfied that there was a reasonable apprehension of bias in this case, although he did not go so far as stating the trial judge was biased. As paragraph 24, he stated “..this is a case where a reasonable person who is aware of the prevalence of racism in our community, the nature of the application and the traditions of integrity in the judiciary would, after looking at the trial as a whole, reasonably apprehend a bias on the part of the learned trial judge.” The appeal was allowed and a new trial ordered.
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These are a series of articles from The Washington Post devoted to the significant issue of racial profiling.
Racial Profiling in
Maryland Defies Definition – or Solution
By Lori Montgomery
May 16, 2001
Last year, Maryland state troopers searched 533 cars on Interstate
95. More than half of the drivers were
black. Ten percent were Hispanic. In all, 63 percent of the drivers forced out
of their cars were minorities.
The Maryland chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union and more
than 140 minority drivers who claim in two separate lawsuits to be victims of
racial profiling by the Maryland State Police look at the numbers and see clear
evidence of racial bias. Police
officials look at the same numbers and see nothing wrong.
Six years after the ACLU forced the Maryland State Police to become the
first major police agency in the country to collect data on highway traffic
stops, two things are clear: Maryland troopers continue to stop and search
minority drivers at rates far higher than their numbers on the highway can
explain. And the two sides are at a
virtual impasse about where to go from here.
Yesterday, Maryland became the 13th state to enact
legislation addressing racial profiling as Gov. Parris N. Glendening signed a
bill that outlaws race-based traffic stops and requires state and municipal
police to record and report the ethnicity of every motorist they pull over.
“It is simply outrageous that African Americans are being targeted for
traffic stops. We know it does
happen. And under this bill, it is
illegal and it will stop,” Glendening said at a bill-signing ceremony packed
with jubilant black lawmakers.
But the assertion that the new law will change police behavior is
challenged by the recent history of the Maryland State Police. And the Maryland experience holds a harsh
lesson for minorities hoping for clear answers as hundreds of police agencies
across the country begin to collect data in an effort to ferret out racial
bias.
Since 1995, under the oversight of a federal judge, the Maryland agency
has pursued a thorough campaign to combat racial profiling. It has assembled one of the most
comprehensive statistical portrait of highway stops of any police agency in the
country. It has prohibited troopers from
using race as a factor to gauge criminal behavior. It has installed video cameras in patrol cars in the most
troublesome barracks. And it has
required troopers to have an “articulable suspicion” of criminal activity
before they ask a driver to consent to a vehicle search.
In short, it has done everything the new law demands and more. The result?
“We have five or six years of data showing gross racial disparity in
who’s stopped on the interstate,” said Deborah Jeon, an attorney with the
Maryland ACLU. “Getting at the problem
is just much more difficult than keeping data and putting out a piece of paper
that says, ‘Don’t do it,’”
Since 1990, 10 states including Maryland have enacted laws requiring
data collection; three more passed laws to eliminate racial profiling. In addition, data collection bills are close
to being passed in Colorado and Texas.
And the federal government and dozens of municipal and state agencies
have begun keeping statistics, many voluntarily.
Other agencies are under legal mandate to collect traffic data. Since last fall, Montgomery County officers
have been required to record the racial characteristics of every motorist they
stop. The rules are part of the
settlement of a four-year civil rights probe by the U.S. Justice Department.
The numbers are slowly rolling in.
As they do, they are raising difficult questions about exactly how to
recognize racial profiling.
Should the percentage of minorities stopped by police be measured
against their presence in the local population? Or should there be some effort to find out how many minorities
are speeding along in the flow of traffic?
Should vehicle searches be tracked as an important measure of profiling?
Across the country, police and community representatives are just
beginning to grapple with those issues, as well as more fundamental concerns
about the accuracy and completeness of the data collected.
In Houston, for example, where Mayor Lee Brown initiated a voluntary
data collection program in 1999, a recent study by the Houston Chronicle found
that police failed to record the race of the driver in hundreds of thousands of
traffic stops, making a meaningful analysis virtually impossible.
“Unfortunately, in a lot of places where data collection has been
mandated, police are not going the extra step to develop benchmarks” to the
accurately measure racial disparity, said Temple University professor John
Lamberth, one of the country’s premier analysts of traffic-stop
statistics. “A lot of places are
reporting the data, and then the question becomes, ‘What does it mean?’ And no
one seems to know.”
That problem has become almost intractable in Maryland. Here, the state’s trove of data allows
virtually any statistical question to be asked and answered. Yet despite intense settlement negotiations
between police and the ACLU, the two sides still cannot agree on whether racial
profiling exists and, is so, what to do about it.
Police officials are just as frustrated by the statement as the ACLU
and its plaintiffs.
“We feel we’re doing all we can do and the numbers are purely what the
numbers are,” said Lt. Col. William Arrington, chief of the field operations
bureau, who is black.
Police point out that they stop far more white drivers than black ones
and that they search only a fraction of the thousands of vehicles they
stop. They do a search, they say, either
because the trooper notices clear evidence of wrongdoing (the smell of
marijuana smoke through a lowered window) or because they have a reasonable
suspicion that criminal activity is afoot (the driver’s name is not listed on
the car’s rental agreement) and the driver consents. For a consent search, police are not required by law to have a
reason for the search.
Why do minorities suffer the majority of police searches?
“I don’t know,” Arrington said.
“But it does not suggest a problem to me.”
Arrington noted that since 1999, video cameras have recorded every
traffic stop made by troopers from the JFK Memorial Highway barracks in Cecil
County, near the Delaware line. That
barracks has been the focus of the ACLU’s most intense scrutiny. None of the videos, Arrington said, has
shown “a trooper acting inappropriately.”
The legal battle began in May 1992, when a Harvard University-educated
public defender was stopped in Cumberland, Md., while driving from a funeral in
Chicago back home to the District.
Robert L. Wilkins refused to consent to a police search, and he and the
three relatives were held for almost an hour while a state trooper called a
police dog to sniff the car for drugs.
Wilkins was convinced that the trooper stopped the care because his
family is black. Later, he obtained a
confidential state police report urging troopers in Western Maryland to be on
the lookout for black drug traffickers in rental cars with Virginia tags,
similar to the car Wilkins and his family were traveling in.
He contacted the ACLU and filed suit in 1993. The state police quickly offered to settle for $50,000, but
Wilkins held out for a promise that police would track traffic stops to
determine whether troopers were targeting people for “driving while black.”
The settlement was signed in 1995.
In 1996, the ACLU had Lamberth examine the data. He drove along I-95 north of Baltimore and
counted speeding cars to establish the percentage of law-breaking drivers who
were black.
Measured against the benchmark, the Maryland numbers were
staggering. At the JFK barracks, nearly
30 percent of driver stopped were black, though Lamberth estimated that blacks
accounted for only 17 percent of the law-breakers. And of the drivers searched, 73 percent were black.
In 1997, a federal judge found a “pattern and practice of
discrimination.” In 1998, the ACLU
filed a new suit backed by testimony from 14 additional plaintiffs and more
than 125 alleged victims of racial profiling.
NO one wants the case to go to trial, and both sides are urgently
looking for common ground.
“We would like for there to be an agreed-upon resolution to this case
that everyone could be happy with, rather than a big court fight that places us
as antagonists,” Wilkins said.
“But I’m not going to lie about the reality,” he said. “Maryland has really been the capital of
racial profiling in the United States.
The disparities on I-95 in Maryland match or beat anything documented
[elsewhere], and they’ve been going on for years and years and years. And they continued even after the settlement
of a lawsuit and the involvement of a federal judge. How much worse can you get than that?
* * *
* * *
By Richard Morin and Michael H. Cottman
June 21, 2001
More than half of all African American men report that they have been the victims of racial profiling by police some time in their lives, according to a survey by The Washington Post, The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation and Harvard University.
Overall, nearly four in 10 black – 37 percent – said they had been unfairly stopped by police because they were black, including 52 percent of all African American men and 25 percent of all black women.
Blacks are not the only Americans who say they are the targets of racial or ethic profiling by law enforcement. One in five Latino and Asian men reported they had been the victims of racially motivated police stops.
But racial profiling remains only one of many examples of intolerance that minorities say they continue to confront. More than a third of all blacks interviewed said they had been rejected for a job or failed to win a promotion because of their race. One in five Latinos and Asians also said they had been discriminated against in the workplace because of their race or ethnicity.
Overwhelming majorities of blacks, Latinos and Asians also report they occasionally experience at least one of the following expressions of prejudice: poor service in stores or restaurants, disparaging comments, or encounters with people who clearly are frightened or suspicious of them because of their race or ethnicity.
“These are precisely the kinds of incidents that contribute to what is coming to be called black middle-class rage – the steady occurrence of slights and putdowns you know in your gut are tied to race but are rarely take the form of blatant racism,” said Lawrence Bobo, professor of sociology at Harvard University. “No one uses the N-word, there is not a flat denial of service. It is insidious, recurrent, lesser treatment.”
A much smaller proportion of whites also said they are victims of discrimination: One out of every three reported that they sometimes face racial slurs, bad service or disrespectful behavior.
A total of 1,709 randomly selected adults were interviewed by telephone March 8 through April 22 for this survey, the latest in a series of polls on public policy issues conducted by The Post, the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation and the Harvard University researchers. The sample included 315 Hispanics, 323 African Americans, and 254 Asians.
The margin of sampling error for the overall results is plus or minus 3 percentage points, and plus or minus 6 percent for the black subsample, 7 points for Latinos and 9 percentage points for Asians.
Widely publicized incidents across the country have drawn public attention to the targeting of minorities by police, a practice some police officials have tried to justify by arguing that minorities are more likely to commit crimes. President Bush told Congress in February that “it is wrong, and we must end it.” Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold of Wisconsin and Rep. John Conyers of Michigan recently introduced companion bills in the House and Senate that would withhold funding from agencies that engage in racial profiling.
And suddenly, from New Jersey to California, victims of unwarranted police stops and harassment are telling their stories, and for the first time, are being heard.
Kinte Cutino, 24, a housepainter in New Haven, Conn., said he was riding his bike when a police officer pulled him over.
“He asked where I was headed, and I told him. He searched me, and didn’t find anything and then he let me go.”
Cutino shrugged off the encounter. “They will stoop you in certain areas, and if you’re black, most likely you will be stopped,” he said. You can’t do anything about it. That’s just the way it is.”
Tommy Thorne would seem to be an unlikely target of police attention. Thorne is 62 years old, a retired Army lieutenant colonel who recently retired as director of an engineering company in Portland, Oregon.
But last year, he and his wife were driving through the desolate Mojave Desert on a vacation trip to Las Vegas. When he pulled his Cadillac Eldorado out of a gas station, “a police car was on my bumper; he was real close. When I turned, he turned; when I changed lanes, he changed lanes, he kept following me.”
“Finally I pulled over and waited five minutes. And he stopped. When I pulled off, he followed me again and then came barreling up along side me and started pulling ahead of me, and backing off, and pulling ahead.”
Thorne said the officer’s intimidating behavior continued for several more miles, then the officer backed off. “He never pulled me over or issued a summons. It just irritated me. And there was nothing I could do about it. I think he saw a black guy in the desert and thought I was a drug dealer. Who knows? But I guess if you’re black and male, at some point it’s going to happen to you.”
Steve Jamie, a guest services manager at a suburban Chicago hotel, recalled the night that he and some friends were coming home from the Taste of Chicago food festival when the police stopped their car in a predominantly Hispanic neighborhood. Without explanation, the officers ordered them out of their car.
“That’s when the police officer put a gun to my head while he was checking me out,” said Jamie, who is Mexican-American. Then the officers abruptly told Jamie and his friends to go. “They were pissed off about something and they took it out on us, because we were Hispanic.”
The survey found that other forms of racial intolerance are commonplace. More than eight in 10 blacks and two thirds of all Latinos and Asians say they occasionally experience at least one of these four intolerant acts: poor service, racial slurs, fearful or defensive behaviors or lack of respect. Two-thirds of all blacks and nearly half of all Latinos and Asians say they experience two or more of these intolerant behaviors from time to time.
Sometimes these ugly moments provoke anger, as when a waiter in an expensive steakhouse asked Earl Arredondo, a 30 year-old Latino form Harlingen, Texas, if he could afford the $32 ribeye steak he just ordered and later dismissively asked him if he know “what calamari is.”
And sometimes they provoke fear, as when a carload of drunken whites pulled to a stop along side Martha Matsuoka, an Asian American who lives in Los Angeles. Then they threw beer bottles at her and demanded that she “go home” and “buy American.”
“I understand these kinds of things rationally, but personally I was stunned,” said Matsuoka, 39, a UCLA graduate student. “It was so real. On a personal level, my mother was upset. She said she has hoped that I would never have to experience anything like that.”
The prejudice reflected in these incidents is clear to see. In other instances, perceptions may not reflect reality: An honest error or an unintended slight may be misconstrued as an act of racial intolerance.
But Harvard’s Bobo cautions that it would be dangerous to dismiss the bulk of these claims as misperceptions or misunderstandings. “These feelings of victimization are not arrived at easily, or because they are pleasant feelings to hold,” he said. “We have to regard them as indicators of a very real social phenomenon. For example, blacks complained for years that they were being targeted by police and were ignored. Only finally, when a cannonload of data was shot across the bow, did people begin to say, ‘Oh, yeah, I guess it’s going on.’”
Black confront far more discrimination than either Latinos and Asians, the survey found. And black men report facing prejudice more often than black women. Nearly half – 46 percent – of all African Americans said they personally had experienced discrimination in the past 10 years, including 55 percent of all black men and 40 percent of black women.
Two years ago, Ali Barr, a television engineer in Atlanta, said he was in Baltimore on business and went to a nearby jazz bar and restaurant with friends to get something to eat.
“It was a white bar, but it featured a black jazz band,” Barr said. “But from the moment we walked in, we could feel the hostility. All the patrons were white. The waitress comes over and tells us we couldn’t sit in the section we were in. She said it was closed until later in the evening.”
“But there were only 10 people in the bar, so we moved to the other section and we asked for coffee. She came back and slammed the coffee down and came back with the manager. The manager said we were not welcome here and that our money wouldn’t be accepted.”
“The manager pointed to a sign saying that management reserved the right serve who they wanted. We were asked to leave. All we wanted was something to eat. We were totally discriminated against. That will always be my memory of downtown Baltimore.”
Four in 10 Latinos and Asian-Americans report they, too, had bee discriminated against in the past 10 years.
Laticia Villegas, 27, owns a children’s clothing store in Fort Worth. She recently attempted to write a check at a local supermarket. The white clerk refused to let her borrow or even touch her pen. Villegas fished around in her purse and wrote the check.
“It is culture shock,” Villegas said. “I’ve never been discriminated against until I moved to Dallas [from San Antonio]. I was offended and surprised, I didn’t expect it. I’m not used to being treated this way. I thought we got past this, but we haven’t, and I know my [one-year-old] daughter will have to grow up experiencing these kinds of things because she does not have blonde hair and blue eyes.”
About one in five whites – 18 percent – also report being the victims of discrimination in the past 10 years. Ten percent said they had been denied a promotion because of their race or ethnicity, 14 percent say they’ve received poor service because of their race and the equal proportion reported being called names or insulted.
Rose Evans, 26, of Aurora, Colo., said she frequently been the target of racially prejudiced comments from Latinos and blacks.
Evans grew up West Denver, a predominantly Mexican-American and Asian neighborhood where “I was picked on quite a bit. You know, ‘stupid white girl’ and worse things in Spanish. But my stepdad is Mexican-American, and I learned to let it roll off of me.”
Earlier this year, her own 9-year-old daughter confronted prejudice. “A group of little black girls at school were picking on her a lot, calling her ‘honky’ and stuff. She would come home from school crying. I told her to ignore them, they were just ignorant people.”
But the bullying continued, and Evans requested a meeting with school officials and the mother of the girl who had been particularly vicious to her daughter.
“The mother became very hostile and started calling me ‘white trash’ and ‘honky’ and other stuff”, Evans said. “I told her children aren’t born ignorant, they are taught it and I saw where her daughter got it from.”
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By Phuong Ly
January 31, 2002
Black drivers are still being stopped by Montgomery County police at a rate significantly higher than their proportion of the country population, according to the second six months of traffic stop demographic data released yesterday.
Of the more than 41,000 traffic stops recorded by county police from April through September 2001, black drivers accounted for 26 percent, the report stated. Blacks make up 15 percent of the county population and 14 percent of the county’s registered drivers.
The latest statistics on traffic stops do not appear to vary significantly from the data for October 2000 through March 2001, which showed that black drivers accounted for 27.3 percent of the 32,743 stops.
During both periods, the percentage of black drivers who were stopped by the police was higher than the disproportionate percentage of blacks receiving traffic tickets noted by the U.S. Department of Justice during its four-year investigation of Montgomery police. That investigation led to the agreement to record data on all traffic stops.
Police Chief Charles A. Moose denied yesterday that his officers are engaging in racial profiling and repeated his contention that more blacks may be stopped because the Washington are – particularly Prince George’s County and the District – has a high percentage of African American residents.
Moose said that police were not guilty of racial profiling because if they were, the percentage of black drivers stopped would be 100. “If we wanted to just stop blacks, we could,” he said. He also said traffic officers and radar tend to be used more often in high-traffic urban areas, such as Whaton and Silver Spring, where many blacks live.
Montgomery County is one of a handful of U.S. jurisdictions in which officers are required to record demographic data on every driver stopped. Because race is not noted on Maryland, D.C. or Virginia driver’s licenses, police officers determine the racial designation they record.
A few County Council members have expressed concern about the disparity in some of the data, particularly those showing that black drivers are more likely than whites to be asked whether their vehicles may be searched.
In the 434 such “consent” searches, 48.4 percent of the drivers were black and 35.5 percent were white, the report stated. Police found evidence or contraband in 114 cases – 55 involving black drivers, 43 involving white drivers.
“There is continuing concern here,” council member Blair G. Ewing (D-At Large) said yesterday. “I don’t know until the police and interested citizen groups do further analysis what it means, but I think it adds to concerns about what’s going on.”
Ewing said the data help confirm his belief that there should be a civilian review board for the police department, an initiative being pushed by the NAACP and the American Civil Liberties Union.
Leaders of the county chapter of the NAACP – whose complaints precipitated the Justice Department investigation – have said they continue to believe that minority drivers are targeted in Montgomery. NAACP leaders said police cannot be trusted to log data correctly.
Police acknowledged yesterday that officers may be checking the American Indian category for people who may be of another race, such as immigrants from India.
About 470 American Indians were stopped, according to the report, but only about 2,500 American Indians live in the county, and there is no large population of them regionwide. The first six months of traffic data showed that about 460 American Indians were stopped.
A police spokeswoman said yesterday that officials would reexamine the data on American Indians.
Nearly 99 percent of the stops recorded were the result of a traffic violation, police said. One percent of the stops were for investigatory reasons, a crime in progress, a lookout broadcast on police radio or because a driver’s name was found on a “wanted” index, officials said. More than 73 percent of the people stopped were county residents.
Police officials and others, including County Council member Philip Andrews (D-Rockville), point to statistics showing that the percentage of black drivers involved in low-discretionary stops – those made because of a red-light violation or radar hit – is similar to the percentage of black drivers stopped overall, about 26 percent.
Andrews, head of the council’s public safety committee, said the numbers indicated that police are using “reasonable” judgment.
But when statistics from mounted red-light cameras are compared with the data on overall traffic stops, there is a difference.
Black drivers make up 21.2 percent of violators caught by red-light cameras, compared with the 26 percent in traffic stops. Of drivers netted by red-light cameras, 62.8 were white, compared with 55.8 percent in traffic stops.
The Maryland Motor Vehicle Administration does not designate Hispanics as a separate category, so Hispanics are usually recorded as black or as white, which skews the camera violation data.
Jim Sobers, chairman of the local NAACP’s criminal justice committee, said he has mixed feelings about some of the data. He said many officers are doing good work, because in the six months that the traffic data covers, the police Internal Affairs Division received just nine complaints related to stops.
But, he said, the high number of blacks pulled over makes him question whether police are doing “selective enforcement.”
“If you put traffic teams on a predominantly black community, you’re going to get predominantly black stops,” he said.