By Rob Moritz
Arkansas News Bureau
LITTLE ROCK — A lawyer who successfully represented five Hispanics in a racial profiling lawsuit against the city of Alexander told a state task force today that racial profiling is a problem across the state.
“I believe it happens, I think it goes on,” attorney Reggie Koch of Sherwood told the Task Force on Racial Profiling.
Koch said he found evidence suggesting that as many as 50 people were victims of racial profiling in Alexander, but most were too afraid to get involved with the lawsuit.
“They were not willing to come forward,” he said, adding he routinely receives calls from potential clients across the state about allegations of racial profiling.
The Legislature created the 13-member task force last year to determine in an objective and fair way whether racial profiling is a problem in Arkansas.
The panel was reconstituted in conjunction with passage of a new law allowing law enforcement officers to pull over and ticket a motorist for not wearing a seatbelt. Previously, officers could cite seatbelt violators only if they were pulled over for some other traffic offense.
The task force is required to submit a report to the governor by the end of 2011 on racial profiling complaints and recommend whether the state needs to require police to track the race of motorists involved in traffic stops.
John Colbert of Fayetteville, vice-chairman of the task force, said the panel was interested in hearing about the Alexander case.
“This committee is basically trying to see if we have a problem with racial profiling throughout the state, and this case itself is really leaning towards what we’re trying to do,” Colbert said.
Earlier this month, U.S. District Judge G. Thomas Eisele ruled that an Alexander police officer engaged in unconstitutional racial profiling when he pulled over five Hispanic men in separate traffic stops in 2007 and cited them for minor windshield violations.
In an 89-page ruling, Eisele ordered the city to pay the men $19,772 in compensatory damages.
Koch said today that punitive damages have yet to be determined and that the city of Alexander is trying to negotiate a settlement.
Koch told the panel the best way to prevent racial profiling is by improving education at the state’s law enforcement academy.
Task force member John Hall of Little Rock said he and three other members of the panel recently attended a training academy session on racial profiling and came away encouraged by what they saw.
Charles Ellis, training supervisor at the Arkansas Law Enforcement Training Academy in Camden, said today that the academy has been teaching a racial profiling course since it was mandated by the Legislature in 2003.
The law not only requires recruits to study racial profiling, but it also requires officers to go through a recertification course every two years, he said.
The course is also available for use by police departments across the state, he said.
