Race, police stops and car searchesUpdate Trend News

Race, police stops and car searches

Published by adming - On 12.54 - This post haved 0 komentar

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Say you're driving from Chicago to Springfield and an Illinois State Police officer pulls you over for speeding or because your car's taillight is broken. You pull over to the side of the road. You turn over your license and registration through the driver's side window. The officer processes the violation.

Then he or she comes back to your car and asks you a question: Can the officer search your car? You have the right to say no.

More at chicagoreporter.com

When that question is on the table, however, the vast majority of drivers in Illinois answer with a yes.

In 2009, white drivers allowed these "consent searches" to happen 96 percent of the time when an officer asked to conduct one, black drivers agreed 97 percent of the time, and 98 percent of Hispanic drivers said yes to such a search, according to data compiled by the Illinois branch of the American Civil Liberties Union based on statistics state government collects annually.

Who gets asked to have their cars searched breaks down on racial lines, however. Between 2004 and 2009, "Hispanic motorists were 2.7 to 4.0 times more likely to be consent searched, and African-American motorists were 1.8 to 3.2 times more likely," the American Civil Liberties Union wrote in a letter (PDF) sent earlier this month to the U.S. Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division.

At the same time, between 2007 and 2009, officers were more likely to find contraband material on white drivers who accepted a search than on minority drivers, the group's analysis found.

"All I can see is data that, year after year, shows a disparate racial impact on how they carry out consent searches," said Harvey Grossman, the group's legal director in Illinois.

"It's based on a hunch," he said of which drivers are asked to have their cars searched. "It's clear that the [Illinios State Police] have hunches more frequently that are wrong about black and Hispanic drivers than white drivers."

The group has a simple solution to the resolve the issue: ban consent searches. Grossman argued there's something "inherently coercive" in being on the side of the road and having officers ask if they can search your car. The group has pushed state government to regulate consent searches since at least 2005, to no avail.

That's where the federal civil rights litigators could come in, Grossman said.

"We hope the department of justice ... asks for a full explanation of this conduct," he said. "We hope the department of justice has the [Illinois State Police] terminate asking for consent searches of cars. It is clear this is a practice that has been abused."

A spokesman for Gov. Pat Quinn said the governor has ordered the state police to investigate the practice.

"The governor's office takes matters of this nature very seriously," according to a statement sent to The Chicago Reporter.

--Micah Maidenberg