Letter: Racial-profiling law is fraught with problems

Friday, Oct. 12, 2001 | 9:26 a.m.

I would like to add some perspective to concerns regarding AB500, the so-called racial-profiling bill.

It appears that state Sen. Joe Neal, D-North Las Vegas, and his associates came up with the idea for the bill, researched it, wrote it, lobbied for it, presented it to state lawmakers, submitted the proposal to a vote and passed it into law. Now it seems that Mr. Neal is unhappy with the quality of his own work and expects Sheriff Jerry Keller to solve his problems.

By not collecting the names and badge numbers of officers, it simply allows involved departments to collect raw data for evaluation to determine if, in fact, their officers are racial-profiling. If this is the case, it is clearly the fault of a given department and the training program needs to be re-evaluated. The individual officers are simply doing what they were trained to do.

By not including names and badge numbers of officers involved in the study, it deprives Neal from calling officers "racists," but may cause Neal to be called "incompetent."

Further, the study itself is doomed to failure by geographics. For example, at the conclusion of this study, an African-American officer who works in a predominantly Hispanic area will have conducted more stops on Latinos, and will therefore be labeled by Neal as a racist.

I don't think that we need a new sheriff, I think Neal's constituents need a new representative.

JOHN KUZMAK JR.