San Diego Has Fallen Behind on Combating Police Racial Profiling

The San Diego Police Department has had a policy to collect race and ethnicity data during traffic stops since 2000, making it one of the first big urban departments to do so, along with San Jose. The department has told officers they needed to gather this information multiple times in the years since.

But the message didn’t stick. A sergeant in the department’s research and analysis division wasn’t aware that a data collection policy still existed when we asked in late October.

“We do not keep any demographics on traffic stops,” Sgt. Laura McLean told us in an email.

It turns out officers were keeping demographics on traffic stops – just not very much. In the first 10 months of 2013, officers gathered racial information on roughly 16,000 traffic stops, an amount equivalent to about a fifth of the citations issued over the same time. Officers pulled over an untold number of additional drivers without giving them tickets – or noting their race. Many officers gathered the information diligently, police officials said, but the amount of data the department collected decreased substantially over time.

Lansdowne said the effort slowed because no one demanded the department analyze racial profiling in traffic stops, so he didn’t emphasize the requirement to collect the data. In the meantime, other law enforcement agencies have surpassed the San Diego Police Department when it comes to being proactive on the issue.

Seven of the 10 largest police departments in the country currently have policies requiring them to gather race and ethnicity information on traffic or pedestrian stops even if officers don’t arrest or cite the person stopped. An eighth department, Washington D.C., documents the race of those frisked by police.

These data are the cornerstone of a high-profile legal challenge over the New York City Police Department’s practice of stopping and frisking pedestrians in an effort to fight crime. Researchers found 84 percent of those stopped and frisked by New York police were black or Hispanic. Civil rights groups have argued these numbers show the practice is unconstitutionally biased against minorities.

Researchers who study the issue say data collection is a key part of a larger effort, along with robust diversity training and strict anti-bias policies, to prevent racial profiling.

“If there is a spirit and culture of transparency and accountability in the department, they’ll collect the data,” said Carol Archbold, a criminal justice professor who specializes in racial profiling issues at North Dakota State University.

‘Unless It’s Happened to You, You Don’t Know That It Happens’

When his own colleagues pulled him over for no reason, it confirmed for Benjamin Kelso that racism still existed in law enforcement.

One time, San Diego police officers stopped him and told him he looked like he was on parole, said Kelso, who heads the local Black Police Officers Association. Another time, Kelso said, officers told him his blue track suit and Cadillac made him look like he was in a gang.

These incidents happened 20 years ago, and in the decades since, Kelso has worked to be a buffer between the San Diego Police Department, where he’s now a detective sergeant, and San Diego’s black community, of which he’s a part. He calls it being “black while blue.”

The department has made a lot of progress on racial issues in the almost 25 years he’s been on the force, Kelso said, and he understands gray areas exist between criminal profiling and racial profiling.

Still, he doesn’t know why Lansdowne and other department officials say that racial profiling isn’t a community concern. He hears it all the time in southeastern San Diego. Racial profiling traffic stops, he said, do happen in the city.

“Is it the norm? No,” Kelso said. “But I think we would be remiss to say that they don’t occur at all.”

In the last five years, San Diego police have received on average fewer than a half dozen formal discrimination complaints, a category that includes racial profiling, a year. Internal investigations found none of the discrimination complaints valid. And Lansdowne said racial profiling hasn’t come up in his meetings with community groups and leaders.

“I’m unaware of any organized group in San Diego that has approached me about the issue in the last eight years,” he said.

Wilson, the local NAACP president, disputes that. Her organization has held multiple forums on the relationship between the black community and local police. She recalled Lansdowne speaking to the NAACP at a recent monthly meeting where profiling was a topic. She’s not sure why police officials would say no one has brought racial profiling problems in San Diego to their attention.

“I would say that’s untrue,” Wilson said.

Told Wilson’s comments, Zimmerman, the assistant chief said both she and Lansdowne meant that police officials don’t hear complaints about specific racial profiling incidents from community groups or residents.

Wilson, however, believes San Diego police profiled her nephew, a 22-year-old Southwestern College student, during a traffic stop in summer 2012. Officers pulled over her nephew and his friend, she said, after they left a Padres game, saying their taillight was out. The officers asked if they were on probation or parole, and when they told the police they had been to the game, the officers quizzed them on the score. The officers let them go. When the nephew and his friend checked later, their taillight worked. Wilson said her nephew was too scared to get the officers’ badge numbers, and that she didn’t tell police officials about the incident, either.

City Councilman David Alvarez, a mayoral candidate, said he believes the department has racially profiled recently, too. He cited the lawsuit over the 2010 City Heights traffic stop during a debate in the fall. Alvarez wants to see the department take profiling issues more seriously.

And Alvarez, who is Hispanic, said he too has been stopped unnecessarily because of his race.

‘It’s An Issue Again’

Afewerki, the black engineering student, expects San Diego police to pull him over every time an officer looks his way.

“It’s sad but it’s a part of life of being a minority in San Diego,” Afewerki said.

Racial profiling matters because it can damage the relationship between police and the communities they serve, said Joshua Chanin, a public affairs professor at San Diego State. Perceived racial double standards can deter crime witnesses from cooperating with police and, at its worst, spark civil unrest, he said.