Over the past few years, determined students, parents and community leaders all over Oregon have been rallying for legislative recognition for the issue of racial profiling. With Oregon House Bill 2441, they may get it.
On March 30, the House Judiciary Committee heard a proposed bill by state Rep. Vicki Walker, D-Eugene, to aid law enforcement agencies’ participation in data collection and analysis. The bill is an expanded version of HB 2433, which was passed in 1997.
“This builds upon that work that was started in 1997,” Walker said. “But it gives law enforcement some direction for where to go and how to accomplish what we want them to accomplish; to make sure that law enforcement agencies do not engage in a practice of discrimination based on race, color or national origin.”
Bola Majekobaje, a working advocate for the Multicultural Center, said nearly all her friends have been targeted by police officers for no reason other than the color of their skin. These instances range in severity from being pulled over to being sprayed with mace.
Majekobaje said students can help stop the occurrences of racial profiling.
“If we tell our law enforcement that we know that racial profiling is wrong, and if we can tell our representatives and senators that it’s wrong, then we do have a voice,” she said.
HB 2433 made changes to Oregon’s stop and search laws, giving more authority to police officers in making traffic stops and conducting weapon searches. A part of the bill addressed data collection by law enforcement agencies for the purposes of ensuring that no community’s police force specifically targets members of minority groups.
Walker’s introduction to the issue of racial profiling came when a constituent brought her attention to the lack of funding for helping law enforcement agencies conduct data collection. She then met with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and became aware of the many Oregonians who believe that racial profiling is a serious and prominent issue.
“We originally were going to mandate that every law enforcement agency in the state of Oregon do data collection,” Walker said. “But that just became an impossible task, because the citizens of Oregon passed a law that says the Legislature cannot impose an un-funded mandate on local communities.”
Instead of spending precious money on mandating data collection, the facilitators of the new bill are calling for the creation of a Law Enforcement Contacts Policy and Data Review Committee to analyze the data collected by the various law enforcement agencies. The bill will also provide technical assistance to law enforcement agencies, Walker said.
Marla Rae, facilitator of the Governor’s Public Safety Council, has worked with the Community Relations Work Group to create a prototype for the data collection.
The work group has also tried to ensure the data collected is proportional to the actual percentage of minority groups in each community. This is tricky, Rae said, because the demographics of minorities in a certain area may not represent the driving population of that community.
Rae added that even if racial profiling is not a common practice within Oregon law enforcement, the bill will help to strengthen the trust relationship between police officers and their communities.
“Law enforcement agencies do not fear data collection,” Walker said of the support she has received from agencies around the state. The bill would allow each community the flexibility to develop its own system without a great deal of legislative control.
Some students at the University have shared personal experiences they have had with racial profiling. Walker said she was impressed with the students speaking their minds, which she believes is important when dealing with legislators.