Two state legislators – a Democrat and Republican – teamed up to file legislation today (January 5) that would expand and “add teeth” to the state’s 15-year-old racial profiling law, they announced earlier at a press conference.
The new law – called the Fair and Impartial Policing Act – would add penalties for “biased policing practices” on both an individual officer and department level. It would also add pedestrian stops to the racial profiling information that officers must track.
“We have a very serious problem,” said State Sen. Jamilah Nasheed (D-St. Louis). “This is not an attack on law enforcement. It’s a piece of legislation where we are trying to weeds out the bad cops. This act is for the good of law enforcement.”
In drafting the act, Nasheed and State Rep. Shamed Dogan (R-Ballwin) worked with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Missouri, the Don’t Shoot Coalition and other community organizations.
“Racial profiling is already illegal, but we just haven’t been taking action on it,” Dogan said.
In 2000, Missouri passed a law making it illegal for law enforcement officers to routinely stop minorities for traffic violations, “as a pretext for investigating other violations of criminal law.” It also required officers to report the racial identity of the person stopped, along with the stop’s purpose and end result.
Every year, Missouri’s attorney general compiles the statewide information and releases an annual report. That report has always shown that African Americans are more like likely to be stopped, searched and arrested than white drivers – even though they are less likely to be in possession of “contraband,” which includes guns or drugs.
“People were skeptical about the widespread belief among African Americans that police were biased against them,” said Dogan, regarding the reason for the original law. “This is the Show Me state, so you need to show me proof that this racial profiling is going on.”
The data has not only done that, but it has shown that the problem is getting worse, he said. In 2000, African-American drivers were 30 percent more likely to be stopped than white drivers, he said. And in 2014, it reached an all-time high of 75 percent more likely to be stopped than white drivers.
Some of the cities and counties that have the largest disparity rates have complained that they are being treated unfairly because their black populations are so small that even a small amount of stops will skew the data, he said. This act helps to address that issue, he said.
The legislation proposes a new analysis of traffic travel patterns, said Jeffrey Mittman, executive director of the ACLU of Missouri.
“The statistics would not just be based on stops versus who lives in your community,” he said. “It would be based on stops versus an analysis of travel through that community. That’s something that police want and the community wants.”
If for three years a police department’s racial profiling statistics are worse than the rest of Missouri’s, then that department could face decertification, he said.
The act also requires law enforcement agencies to review annually the data that is collected by their officers. Officers who show patterns of disparity in their stops must be investigated and then potentially undergo counseling and training. If those officers persist in bias-based policing, they must be disciplined or dismissed.
“For 15 years, there has been reporting, reporting, reporting,” Mittman said. “No consequences. This bill has real consequences.”
The past 15 years have also made it clear that there was an important factor missing from the law – pedestrian stops, said Denise Lieberman, co-chair of the Don’t Shoot Coalition and an attorney who worked on drafting the original legislation.
The act now makes bias in police pedestrian stops as equally illegal as traffic stops, she said.
“This is a crucial addition because it is a significant source of many problems,” she said. “Michael Brown was a pedestrian stop. VonDerrit Myers was a pedestrian stop.”
Pedestrian stops are the place where black youth and the most marginalized citizens are likely to have encounters with police, she said. Racial profiling often means that police assume the worst about people when they stop them, she said.
“These assumptions produce tragic results,” she said. “Countless incidents occur every day.”
Dogan and Nasheed said they don’t know when the bill might be taken up. Dogan said that he hasn’t gotten any reassurances among his Republican base that it will pass.
“But I am looking forward to having this discussion come up,” he said, “because it’s about time after these 15 years of collecting this data that we take that next step.”
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