University President Dave Frohnmayer first heard complaints about racial profiling when he served as Oregon attorney general in the 1980s. At that time, state law enforcement agencies were trying to staunch the flow of black tar heroin coming into Oregon from Mexico, and Frohnmayer said he starting hearing stories of Hispanic citizens complaining that police were stopping them at a higher rate than whites.
“There was concern about people being stopped for ‘driving while Hispanic’,” Frohnmayer said.
Concerns over racial profiling in Oregon spurred state lawmakers in 2001 to pass a resolution — Senate Bill 415 — establishing a Law Enforcement Contacts Policy and Data Review Committee.
In January, Gov. John Kitzhaber appointed Frohnmayer to lead the committee, which is charged with developing data and policies regarding appropriate use of race, color and national origin in law enforcement. Kitzhaber also appointed University Law Professor Keith Aoki, Lane County Sheriff Jan Clemens and David Fidanque, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Oregon, to the 11-person group.
Frohnmayer described the committee as a preemptive measure, saying Oregon was “way ahead of the curve” on issues of racism in law enforcement. But he said racial profiling is still a problem and work needs to be done if Oregon wants to avoid the kinds of problems seen elsewhere in the United States.
A recent University’s Oregon Survey Research Laboratory survey indicated that the majority of Oregonians believe race plays a role in traffic stops and crimes. The telephone survey of 800 Oregonians was conducted in December 2001 for the Oregon Criminal Justice Commission and also was intended to test whether people’s perceptions about police and race had changed since the Sept. 11 attacks.
“The general findings were that the majority of respondents have generally positive feelings about our police officers,” said Phillip Lemman, executive director of CJC.
However, Lemman said that 17 percent of those surveyed believed race always or often played a role in police stops, and 39 percent believed it sometimes did. Thirty-four percent of those surveyed said it rarely or never did.
But Lemman added that many people surveyed had no personal experience with racial profiling — attitudes are often based on what people hear.
“We’ve found that a fair amount of perception (about racial profiling) is driven by media coverage,” Lemman said.
Student Lara Wilhelm seemed to lend credence to that finding. While the University sophomore said she thinks racial profiling is a serious problem in Oregon and across the country — particularly since the Sept. 11 attacks — she also said her experience with racial profiling is limited to only what she has seen on television or read about in newspapers.
“I’ve heard a lot about it,” she said. “But being a white girl — we’re probably the least targeted out of everyone.”
Regardless of what inspires such perceptions, Frohnmayer said the fact that they exist creates a problem for law enforcement. Whether people are being harassed is almost impossible to quantify, but the perception of harassment is enough to warrant investigation and reform.
In response to complaints that the Eugene Police Department engaged in racial profiling, on Jan. 1, the department began requiring officers to fill out cards containing information about traffic stops — including the perceived race of the person being stopped. According to Patrol Capt. Becky Hanson, EPD originally required officers to ask about the ethnicity of people they stopped, but discontinued the practice after officers “found that asking was contentious.”
EPD conducted a survey last fall to determine whether complaints that EPD officers made traffic stops based on race were valid, but because the survey was not conducted in a scientific manner, the results of the survey are not being used to evaluate policy, Hanson said.
Frohnmayer lauded efforts like EPD’s and called the openness and willingness to address the issue among police in Oregon “surprising and gratifying.” But he added that more needs to be done.
“There has to be an effort on the part of police agencies to identify the reasons why police act the way they do,” he said. “The fact remains, we need better data.”
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