ACLU Assails Racial Disparity in Traffic Stops

NEW YORK —  The war on drugs has significantly increased the number of traffic stops based on race throughout the country, the American Civil Liberties Union said in a report released Wednesday.

“Skin color has become a substitute for evidence in a way that really resembles Jim Crow justice on the nation’s highways,” ACLU Executive Director Ira Glasser said.

The Drug Enforcement Administration’s “Operation Pipeline” has trained at least 27,000 law enforcement officials on how to spot drug couriers on highways and has unfairly created a perception that blacks, Latinos and other minorities are more likely to possess drugs, Glasser said.

The ACLU said the practice is so common that minority communities have given it the derisive term “driving while black or brown.” The ACLU has filed lawsuits in Maryland, Illinois, New Jersey and Oklahoma that challenge racial profiling.

DEA officials in Washington did not immediately return calls for comment.

The ACLU’s 43-page report is largely a collection of case studies from 23 states rather than a statistical analysis.

It was released to rebut police denials that racial profiling exists, said David Harris, a law professor at the University of Toledo in Ohio and an author of the report.

“By laying out the facts in such detail in this report, we hope that we can now get beyond ‘Is there really a problem?’ to ‘What are we as a nation going to do about it?’ ” Harris said.

The ACLU is calling on police departments to voluntarily begin documenting racial profiling. Some already have, such as those in San Diego and San Jose.

In April, North Carolina became the first state to require data collection on all traffic stops. Similar bills have been introduced in Congress and in Arkansas, California, Connecticut, Florida, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Texas and Virginia.