Civil Rights Chief Calls for End to Racial Profiling
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LOS ANGELES — The acting head of the U.S. Justice Department’s civil rights division called on a conference of lawyers Friday to help eradicate racial stereotyping by police departments and to support affirmative action in law school admissions.
Bill Lann Lee decried the breakdown of trust between police and minority communities and traced much of it to the practice of racial profiling.
“We have a situation in this country with a black attorney telling his son who goes out at night not to be afraid of the gangbangers but to be afraid of the police,” Lee said.
Lee said the civil rights division is taking action in many states to obtain consent decrees from police departments willing to eliminate racial profiling from their methods of operation.
He cited New Jersey, where the state attorney general’s office has acknowledged that state police use racial profiling in decisions to stop motorists for questioning. He said a consent decree is being worked out there.
Lee said the use of race to identify motorists is not only wrong but “it’s not efficient law enforcement.”
While police are stopping blacks and Latinos, he said, they miss the true lawbreakers.
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