ACLU spokesman: Iowa needs to take a better look at racial profiling

The American Civil Liberties Union of Iowa has called out state legislators and law enforcement, demanding that officials provide better data on possible cases of racial profiling.

“Racial profiling in Iowa still exists,” wrote Marty Ryan, ACLU of Iowa’s legislative director, in a “Statehouse Update” to ACLU supporters. “I wanted to believe that the issue was under control and not more than a rare oddity.”

Ryan take direct issue with a 2003 Iowa Division of Criminal and Juvenile Justice Planning report of the Iowa Highway Patrol’s voluntary collection data on traffic stops. Ryan admits that his judgment regarding the study was initially based not on his own reading, but on news reports about the statistical data. Now that he has read the report for himself, however, he feels that it actually provides more questions than answers.

Most of the analysis within the report is basically useless.  For instance, “[C]aution is urged when attempting to draw conclusions from the data in Tables 2, 3, and 4.  As can be seen in Table 2, for many (11,854) of these cases, the race of the driver was not reported, and for over half (53.2%) of these unknown-race drivers, it also was unknown whether their vehicle was registered in Iowa or elsewhere.”  Id. at 3.  There are two observations to take from the second sentence within this quote.  First, what is the significance of having the vehicle registered in Iowa?  I would not be so concerned about where the vehicle is registered.  At issue is the driver, not the vehicle.  That, in my opinion, makes the statistic on Iowa registrations a Red Herring.  Why was data about vehicle registration accumulated?  What conclusion on racial profiling could ever be brought about because of a vehicle registration?  Second, if the race of the driver was not reported in close to 12,000 instances, did several troopers within the department shun their responsibility to ensure accurate reporting?

Again, on page 5, “[C]aution should be used when attempting to draw conclusions” because the “greatest number of unknown outcomes was in cases where the race of the driver was also unknown.”  Id at 5.  Isn’t the race of the driver, for purposes of detecting the existence or nonexitence of racial profiling, the discretion of the perceiver (the trooper)?  How can there be an unknown?

The wastefulness of this report is summed up in the conclusion:  “The data in this report do not conclusively” determine whether or not “ISP troopers are stopping, ticketing, searching or arresting people differently because of their race.”  Id at 8.  And yet I was assured that the purpose of the voluntary collection of data was to determine just what the report failed to determine.

Ryan ends the e-mail message with both a demand for a new study by an independent third party, and for the legislature to revisit and expand previous laws on traffic stop data collection to include sheriff departments, campus police and other law enforcement agencies.

“I’ve heard numerous law enforcement officials proclaim, ‘If you haven’t done anything wrong, what do you have to hide?’ That phrase should now come back to haunt those who use it. Let’s compile decent statistics and do something about it,” Ryan said. “What do we have to hide?”