Agencies are not doing enough to create policies to stop racial profiling in the state
24th September 2018 · 0 Comments
By Fritz Esker
Contributing Writer
The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) released a report stating that Louisiana law enforcement agencies are not doing enough to create policies and procedures to stop racial profiling.
Racial profiling is when law enforcement targets people because of their skin color. The report, “Racial Profiling in Louisiana: Unconstitutional and Counterproductive,” analyzed the lack of detailed racial profiling procedures across the state. More than one-third of state law enforcement agencies do not have any racial profiling policy at all and the policies at many other agencies fail to give officers and deputies the tools they need to understand what conduct is prohibited.
“Racial profiling is pervasive and insidious. It creates profound distrust between over-policed communities and law enforcement, thereby endangering public safety,” said Lisa Graybill, deputy legal director for the SPLC. “Without in-depth racial profiling policies, law enforcement officers across Louisiana are missing a major tool to help them effectively protect and serve all communities. To ignore this problem is to condone it, and it has to stop.”
The two common types of racial profiling are unreasonable suspicion and unequal enforcement. Unreasonable suspicion is when a law enforcement officer assumes a person is committing a crime solely on the basis of the person’s ethnicity. Unequal enforcement is when an officer stops a person for a minor infraction, but would not stop another person of a different ethnicity for the same infraction.
The SPLC requested racial profiling policies from 331 law enforcement agencies throughout Louisiana. 310 responded. Of the 310 agencies, 109 admitted to having no racial profiling policy. Policies provided by 89 law enforcement agencies were not broad enough to prohibit both unreasonable suspicion and unequal enforcement. Another 112 agencies provided policies that cover both types of racial profiling, but these policies were usually some combination of short, vague or unclear.
Jamila Johnson, senior supervising attorney for the SPLC, said most of the departments had policies that focused on unreasonable suspicion, but failed to include instructions on unequal enforcement. She added that it is important for all departments to have clear definitions of these important terms because even well-intentioned police officers can be guilty of racial profiling without realizing they are doing it.
“These policies are important because they help officers understand how to do their jobs in the best way and that is important regardless of an officer’s intent,” Johnson said. “The public has a good understanding that racial profiling is wrong and police officers have a good understanding that racial profiling is wrong. The next step is making sure that police departments truly understand what racial profiling is… A good racial profiling policy gives officers a good example of what is prohibited.”
Some policies feature very little information. The Gretna Police Department’s policy on arrests has a single sentence stating that “It is the policy of the Gretna Police Department to treat all individuals equally and fairly without regard to race, religion, sex, nationality, or handicap.” There is no further discussion on what racial profiling is or what conduct is prohibited. As of 2016, Africans Americans made up two-thirds of Gretna’s arrests despite making up only one-third of their population.
The SPLC noted that in 2016 African Americans comprised only 30.6 percent of Louisiana’s adult population, but accounted for 53.7 percent of adults who were arrested. Also in 2016, African Americans are 2.9 times more likely than white people to be arrested for marijuana possession even though African Americans are statistically less likely than white people to use marijuana.
The New Orleans Police Department received some of the best marks in the SPLC’s report, but the SPLC still felt there was room for improvement in defining terms like “bias-based policing.”
Gary Scheets, a spokesman for the NOPD, said the department takes its mission to eliminate racial bias in policing seriously.
“NOPD’s policy was drafted in close cooperation with the United States Department of Justice Civil Rights Division and is regarded as one of the best policies in the nation on this issue,” Scheets said. “While there is still more work to do, the continuing efforts by the NOPD and consent decree monitors to implement and practice constitutional policing have proved effective and have yielded positive results with respect to the relationship between the department and the citizens of New Orleans.”
For evidence backing up this statement, Scheets pointed to a recent Crime Coalition survey that said more than 80 percent of New Orleans residents felt safe in their neighborhoods and 55 percent of New Orleans residents had an overall positive impression of the NOPD, up four percentage points from last year.
The Madisonville Police Department, which has no policy whatsoever on racial profiling, did not return requests for comment by press time.
This article originally published in the September 24, 2018 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
