The Department of Justice Racial Profiling Guidance Has Loopholes
Feature Story by civilrights.org staff - June 23, 2003
The Leadership Conference on Civil Rights (LCCR), the nation's oldest, largest, and most diverse civil and human rights coalition, expressed dissatisfaction with the Department of Justice's recently released guidance on racial profiling. LCCR asserted that the guidance on racial profiling is like a poorly constructed building: while the foundation is there, the main components needed to hold it up were either faulty or missing.
According to LCCR executive director, Wade Henderson, there are four main loopholes in the DOJ racial profiling guidance.
- The guidelines only apply to federal agents, rather than state and local police. This is problematic since state and local police have to deal more with responsibilities where racial profiling is prevalent such as traffic stops and searches.
- The second problem is that there is no clear enforcement mechanism. Henderson says this leaves "victims of profiling without a remedy."
- The new policy does not require documentation to monitor the government's ability to stop racial profiling.
- The guidance includes broad wording like 'national security,' which makes the motivation and purpose of the policy unclear.
Due to these deficiencies in the new policy, Henderson concluded that "many in the Latino, Arab, Muslim, African, and South Asian communities will remain targets of unjustified law enforcement action based on race or ethnicity."
LCCR coalition member, the National Council of La Raza (NCLR), shared this dissatisfaction. NCLR President Raul Yzaguirre remarked, "The two federal agencies that have been most likely to engage in profiling, the INS and the Customs Service, appear to be wholly exempt from this policy. That is unacceptable."
Karen K. Narasaki, president and executive director of the National Asian Pacific American Legal Consortium, echoed Yzaguirre and Henderson's sentiments. Calling the guidelines "incomplete" she explained that "without a means of enforcement, by allowing targets to be chosen by religion and national origin, and by carving out an exception that easily swallows the rule, the attorney general ignores the president's promise to end racial profiling. Once again we see the evidence that we need federal legislation to end profiling, and we need it now."
Henderson called for a more comprehensive plan to eliminate racial profiling. "We urge Congress to act to end racial and ethnic profiling by enacting a bill that builds on the administration's definition, closes the loopholes, and provides a remedy for victims of this discredited practice."
