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Abdussabur: Don’t raise expectations with a nothing bill.
CHRO’s Sharp: “It’s better than what we have.”
As Connecticut tries to salvage a disgraced racial profiling law, the leader of a national black cop group called the fix “a joke.”
New Haven cop Shafiq Abdussabur (pictured), the new head of the National Association of Black Law Enforcement Officers (NABLEO), offered that take at a panel on racial profiling at Gateway Community College’s Long Wharf campus Monday evening.
The event was cosponsored by the the Connecticut Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities, the African American Affairs Commission, the Latino and Puerto Rican Affairs Commission, the Asian Pacific American Affairs Commission, the NAACP, the Police Chiefs Commission, and the Commission on Racial and Ethnic Disparity in the Criminal Justice System.
Several members of those groups showed up to push a bill that aims to put teeth in a racial profiling law that’s been ignored for years. The Alvin W. Penn Racial Profiling Prohibition Act, passed in 1999, “prohibits any law enforcement agency from stopping, detaining, or searching any motorist when the stop is motivated solely by considerations of the race, color, ethnicity, age, gender or sexual orientation.”
It requires police departments to collect data on traffic stops and submit reports to the state.
However, two-thirds of departments have ignored that requirement and the current law has no penalty against them. And the reports were being sent to the African-American Affairs Commission, which said it didn’t have the resources to adequately analyze the information.
Those flaws hit the public spotlight when a Hartford Courant analysis of 100,000 traffic stops revealed wide disparities in the treatment of whites versus blacks and Hispanics. The Courant report, combined with a federal probe that uncovered rampant discrimination against Hispanics by East Haven police, spurred civil rights leaders to launch an effort to strengthen the Alvin Penn law.
Werner Oyanadel (at right in photo with Assistant Police Chief Thaddeus Reddish), acting director of the Latino and Puerto Rican Affairs Commission, issued a call Monday for a bill that aims to do just that. Senate Bill 364 would amend the Alvin Penn law to include a penalty: It would allow the state to withhold state funds from towns that refuse to send along their traffic stop data. And the bill would pass the responsibility of collecting and analyzing the data to the state Office of Policy and Management.
The bill would also introduce new guidelines for police departments on how to collect the data. Oyanadel pitched the bill as a key reform in the wake of two revelations — the Courant report and the East Haven FBI probe — that are “seriously undermining the credibility” of the police.
He said the bill would not only protect Latinos, but would offer “a great tool for police departments to help themselves against erroneous allegations” of racial profiling.
Gov. Dannel P. Malloy is supporting the effort this year. His administration is applying for a $1.2 million federal grant to support the data collection and analysis.
Panelist Abdussabur, who has authored a book on the subject of racial profiling, listened to the discussion of the law for about an hour. Then he took the mic.
“I think this bill is a joke,” he said.
He said the bill is too limited because it covers only traffic stops. People of color can be discriminated against in so many other settings, he argued, not just while driving a car. What about when a cop goes up to a pedestrian for a “stop-and-frisk”? he asked. He said the state should collect that data, as well as data on the racial disparity of stops of people on bicycles and of suspicious persons on private and public property.
The state also needs to look at how different racial groups are treated for the same offense, Abdussabur argued: For example, a person charged with disorderly conduct can be put in jail or released on a promise to appear in court.
“If you’re not going to go in and be serious about it, don’t bother,” Abdussabur said. He said there is an urgency to the racial profiling problem. His own wife, who’s Muslim, was stopped by a cop while going to buy eggs.
“I don’t have time to be patient,” he said.
He also questioned whether the bill would really add teeth to the law. The bill says that if a municipal police department or the state police fails to comply, the state “may order an appropriate penalty in the form of the withholding of state funds from such department.”
On behalf of NABLEO, Abdussabur outlined his recommendations in a 10-page letter sent to Gov. Malloy on April 13. He said Malloy suggested he join an advisory group set up to oversee implementation of the law.
However, time is running short on this state legislative session, which ends on May 9. The bill has passed the Senate and is pending before the House.
Oyanadel replied that the bill would fill a big gap in available data on racial profiling.
Several people in the audience shared Abdussabur’s concerns that the bill won’t go far enough.
“Not everyone drives in the African-American community,” said Dwight resident Greg Smith (at left in photo), who is working with NABLEO on the issue.
“We have a lot of racial profiling that goes on that is not related to traffic stops,” Smith said. “Who’s collecting that data?”
Barbara Fair (at right in photo) bemoaned that the law does not protect from being pulled over by police based solely on their criminal records.
A woman from Division Street echoed Smith’s remarks. The woman (pictured), who gave her name as Pamela C., said she’s “afraid and concerned” because her husband has been stopped by police three times in the past 15 years for the crime of catching the bus to work in West Haven.
She suggested the Alvin Penn law be strengthened to investigate how cops treat people who are not just driving, but walking or catching the bus.
Cheryl Sharp, an attorney with the state Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities (CHRO), replied that Connecticut has another law that protects civil rights and holds more teeth than the Alvin Penn law.
The Connecticut Discriminatory Practice Act protects people from being deprived of their Constitutional rights based on: religion, national origin, immigration status, color, race, sex, sexual orientation, blindness or physical disability. The penalty is a class A misdemeanor, or — in the case of property damage over $1,000 — a class D felony.
Sharp’s office accepts civilian complaints from people who are discriminated against in those protected classes, as long as they file a complaint within 180 days of the time the knew or should have known they were treated unfairly.
Under the Discriminatory Practice Act, Sharp said, civilians can file a complaint not just for “driving while black,” but for “walking while black.”
Ken Barone (pictured), a researcher with the Institute for Municipal and Regional Policy at Central Connecticut State University, called the Alvin Penn bill a good starting point. His institute has been enlisted by the state to take over the task of collecting and analyzing the traffic stop data. He said while his group was called in to investigate traffic stops, “this is the beginning of a conversation about racial profiling” that could become broader.
For now, he said, “the focus is compliance with the Alvin Penn law.”
The conversation continued into the hallway. Attorney Sharp, who grew up in the North End of Hartford, told Greg Smith that she shares his commitment to end racial profiling. That’s why she and fellow staffers fought to continue to hold outreach meetings like the one Monday night after the state laid off the CHRO’s entire outreach team, she said.
Fair brought up another complaint raised during the discussion — that the bill does not require the state to collect data on the religion of motorists at traffic stops.
Mongi Dhaouadi, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, had made the case for the collecting data on religion because of rampant discrimination against Muslims in the wake of 9/11. The new bill adds religion as a protected class, but does not require officers to mark down the religion of drivers, because of a fear that it would be too difficult for cops to determine.
“I agree,” Sharp told Fair. “However, we have seven days before the [legislative] session ends.”
Abdussabur told Sharp he would not endorse the bill because he doesn’t want to set the expectation that it will have any impact.
Sharp tried to persuade him otherwise.
“Although it’s not where we want to end up,” she said, “it’s better than what we have.”
It's good to know that people are working on this important issue. Collecting data can help though it is far from perfect.
It may be more helpful to have red light cameras, which are "color blind" and only issue fines (which are equivalent to parking tickets) if someone breaks the law and endangers other road users.
There's no option for human error, which at its worst can lead to a shooting, by an officer who wants to discriminate. This is one reason why thousands of very diverse cities use such devices.
Install them at the commuter entrances to the City, and run them at commuting times, when the population is 85%-95% white if not higher. People should be fined for breaking the law, even if this disproportionately discriminates against white people.
In addition to cameras, more community partnerships would be helpful. That's the only way to really build trust. Give bigger incentives for the officers who enforce the law to live in the same diverse urban neighborhoods where they give out tickets, instead of in some remote subdivision like where Zimmerman lived.