Donald Hanrahan of the ACLU of Illinois Springfield chapter wrote to the State Journal-Register to urge a solution to the issue of racial bias in consent searches by Illinois State Police. He writes:
The ACLU case against the state police for racial profiling has generated a storm of protest, with claims by a few whites of “reverse discrimination” and claims that the police, just because they are police, probably have a legitimate reason to pull over far more Hispanics and blacks than whites.
The problem with such claims is apparent. As noted in every article published about the case, the ACLU investigated only the statistics provided by the Illinois State Police themselves. The statistics the state police provided (collected because of a law passed to make sure that profiling was not happening) showed that searches of whites were far more likely to turn up contraband than searches of other races, yet the police demanded searches of far more racial minorities than whites. Blacks are very familiar with the sarcastic expression DWB — the “crime” of “driving while black,” and darned if these statistics don’t seem to prove it.
Read the whole letter. Read more about the ACLU's complaint to the Department of Justice.
