A bill intended to restrict Rhode Island police officers' power to pull over and search drivers was introduced in the House of Representatives Tuesday by Rep. Joe Almeida, D-Dist. 12. Sen. Rhoda Perry P'91, D-Dist. 3, whose district includes Brown's campus, will soon introduce an identical bill in the state Senate.
Perry and Almeida say they hope the legislation will stop officers from pulling over and searching cars based solely on the driver's skin color.
The bill, if passed, would ban officers from using a traffic violation as an excuse to pull over drivers for other reasons and from asking passengers for identification or proof of citizenship during a stop without suspicion of criminal activity, except when complying with federal law. It also requires officers to record their reasons for searching cars on traffic stops and will restrict their use of juvenile consent searches, in which officers search any minor who has given consent.
Almeida and Perry drafted the legislation largely in response to studies conducted by Northeastern University in the summer of 2003 and April 2006, according to Perry. The studies showed Rhode Island police stop non-white drivers at higher rates than they stop white drivers and are twice as likely to search non-white drivers. But the studies revealed that, when searched, white drivers are more frequently found with contraband such as drugs, alcohol and weapons.
Perry said she has always supported legislation expanding protection against racial profiling. "I continued my interests in introducing this legislation," she said. "Brown has always been helpful to me on these issues."
The bill will not affect the University in any way, said Michael Chapman, vice president for public affairs and University relations, after speaking with the Office of the General Counsel, which handles Brown's legal affairs. The Department of Public Safety already has "safeguards" that ensure that its ban on racial profiling is obeyed, he said. "These safeguards include training, supervision, complaint mechanisms, collection of stop data and analysis of possible trends that are conducted by DPS leadership and the Public Safety Oversight Committee," he said.
But Perry said a September incident of alleged police brutality against a black graduate student at the University contributed to the decision to introduce the legislation. "It was a marginal concern, but marginal concerns add up to major concerns," she said.
Other "marginal concerns" include an incident on July 11 when officials stopped a van for failing to signal a lane change, resulting in the detainment and transportation to immigration headquarters of 14 Guatemalans who were inside the van, Perry said.
The alleged incident of police brutality against a Brown student "is certainly an example that racial profiling seems to permeate law enforcement in a variety of situations," said Stephen Brown, the executive director of the Rhode Island affiliate of the American Civil Liberties Union.
In lobbying for the legislation, Brown said he and other supporters of the bill might remind Providence legislators of the incident to convince them to support the bill.
Several reports released by the ACLU in the past will also provide impetus for supporting the legislation, Brown said. The latest report, released last month, said racial profiling by Rhode Island police has not changed significantly since the ACLU first analyzed data from a traffic stop study in March 2005.
Almeida, a retired Providence police officer, did not return calls for comment. But at a Jan. 16 news conference, he said, "A look at the news lately will tell you that, despite the laws we've already passed, racial profiling is still happening in Rhode Island," according to the press release. In 2004, the General Assembly passed a racial profiling act - also sponsored by Perry and Almeida - that banned "consent" searches and detention of drivers without probable cause and required the continued collection of data on traffic stops.
But Perry said the most recent Northeastern study "revealed that police departments had not made any substantial efforts or substantial changes that would address the finding of the data (from previous studies)."
Major Steven O'Donnell, a spokesman for the Rhode Island State Police, did not return calls for comment.
