Rhode Island police continue to discriminate against minority drivers when they decide which vehicles to search, an analysis by a civil-rights group said yesterday, and the pattern has worsened since the current state racial-profiling study began last year, reports the Providence Journal. Overall, the police continue to search cars driven by minority group members more than twice as often as those driven by whites, the study by the Rhode Island affiliate of the American Civil Liberties Union found.
The ACLU also found improvements at some departments, where the police sharply reduced or even eliminated the disparities in the way whites and minority-group members are treated when officers are deciding whether to search a vehicle. Col. Stephen McCartney, the Warwick police chief and the Rhode Island Police Chiefs Association’s spokesman on the issue, said, “The study shows there’s an issue here, and there’s a problem.”
Link: http://www.projo.com/news/content/projo_20050808_profile8.8a80049.html