Answers needed on racial bias data
If you see the flashing lights of a state trooper patrol car behind you and you’re black or Hispanic, you’re three times more likely to be asked by the trooper if she or he can search your car.
Those are the disturbing findings of an analysis of 2009 state police traffic stops by the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois.
Blacks and Hispanics were three times more likely than whites to be asked to submit to a “consent search” in 2009, even though searches of white drivers more often uncovered drugs, alcohol or weapons.
That’s actually an improvement. In 2006, The Associated Press recently reported, Hispanics were nearly four times more likely to be asked to consent to a search.
The ACLU filed a complaint last week based on the results of its findings, but Tuesday, the state police denied any racial bias in deciding whom to ask permission to conduct searches.
“In 2009, ISP requested consent from 2 out of every 1,000 motorists stopped. This statistic demonstrates that troopers ... are not abusing the use of consent searches,” department spokesman Scott Compton said in a statement to the AP. He said state police are less likely than other police to seek permission to search minority drivers.
It may very well be true that state police are not abusing consent searches generally, but the racial disparity is alarming after years of claims of racial bias by law enforcement in the suburbs, around the state and nation.
It’s a cause for concern, to say the least, that Compton would defend his agency by saying it’s doing better than others. That’s not the point.
We don’t think the evidence of a problem is strong enough yet to demand that state police be barred from asking drivers to search their vehicles. (Drivers don’t have to agree, but they do about 90 percent of the time.)
The searches did lead to state police seizing 2,069 firearms and more than 14,000 pounds of illegal drugs and making thousands of arrests for serious crimes in 2009.
Why is this still happening, especially when searches of white drivers’ vehicles turn up more contraband? The ACLU analysis showed only 177 of the consent searches turned up illegal items, but more than half of the contraband came from white drivers.
Why are racial minorities asked for a search three times more than whites?
That is the key question that deserves probing and honest answers from the Illinois State Police.
The ACLU wants the U.S. Justice Department to investigate and possibly bar the searches.
Gov. Pat Quinn asked his state police director to review the ACLU’s analysis. We urge the state police to do so with less defensiveness and more of an open mind than they have shown so far. If that doesn’t happen, the U.S. Justice Department may need to demand some answers.