Data shows bias in consent searches

Civil rights groups are urging an end to so-called "consent" searches by Illinois police during traffic stops, arguing that minorities are searched more often than whites.

Since 2004, under a state law aimed at identifying racial bias in traffic stops, the Illinois Department of Transportation has collected data from 939 police agencies around the state. Northwestern University's Center for Public Safety analyzed 2.4 million traffic stops made last year.

The study found that consent searches made up less than 1 percent of all traffic stops in 2007. Minority drivers underwent consent searches - when police ask drivers for permission to look in their vehicles - at a rate 2.5 times higher than white drivers.

Despite the appearance that police target minority drivers more often for the consent searches, the data shows that contraband, such as drugs or guns, was discovered almost twice as often among vehicles driven by white drivers as among minorities. If police are targeting minority drivers for the consent searches, it appears they are doing so based on bias, not on the facts.

Minority drivers were 10 percent more likely to be stopped on Illinois roads than white drivers last year, according to the data, but on a positive note, that figure is at its lowest level since 2004.

From The (Alton) Telegraph

Pope's wise words

Pope Benedict XVI had this to say recently before a World Youth Day audience in Sydney, Australia:

"It is as though one catches glimpses of the Genesis creation story - light and darkness, the sun and the moon, the waters, the earth and living creatures ... Reluctantly we come to acknowledge that there are also scars which mark the surface of our earth, erosion, deforestation, the squandering of the world's mineral and ocean resources in order to fuel an insatiable consumption."

Fact is you don't have to be a rabid tree-hugger to care about what kind of planet we are handing to our kids, all for the sake of living for today, riding in style, turning our homes into palaces - the "insatiable consumption" this world religious leader references. To be sure, the pope lives in pretty sweet digs himself. Still, he's right: We just don't need that much. Sometimes it's hard to reconsider one's priorities. Perhaps we should think of it as a moral imperative.

From the (Peoria) Journal Star