Lack of officer ID in racial profiling study criticized

Keith Paul

Monday, Oct. 22, 2001 | 8:21 a.m.

Assemblyman Wendell Williams, frustrated by the decision not to include a way to identify officers in a racial profiling study, vows he will introduce a bill in the next legislative session to force police to redo the study.

Williams this year authored Assembly Bill 500, requiring the attorney general's office to study traffic stops to determine if racial profiling is being used by police.

Police departments in Clark and Washoe counties and the Nevada Highway Patrol will record information from each traffic stop next year. Results of the study will be presented to the 2003 Legislature. A monthlong test of the form to be used begins next week.

The information includes race, age and gender of the person stopped, the area where the stop was made, whether a search, seizure or arrest was made and the reason, whether handcuffs were used, and the disposition. It does not include any way to identify the officer involved.

That angered Williams.

"The reason we didn't address it was we thought it was a no-brainer, that it would be automatic," Williams said. "We had no idea that the sheriff would push for not identifying the officers."

Sheriff Jerry Keller said the study is meant to examine the entire department, not individual officers.

In addition, Undersheriff Richard Winget said, "Some people may use the statistics irrationally and unrealistically by looking at one issue of the data for their own agendas."

During a hearing on the proposed racial profiling forms in September, Keller was asked several times by members of the public why officers' names were not included on the forms.

Gary Peck, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada, said not including the officer identifiers will undermine the study's credibility.

"It is unfortunate that law enforcement and the attorney general's office still refuse to include individual officer identifier information," he said. "That decision cannot be justified on social science or policy analysis grounds, but clearly is political."

Peck noted that a 160-page report published earlier this year by the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF) cites the need of officer identifiers.

"A data collection system that is implemented with the true intent of assessing and responding to racially biased policing should have the capacity to identify potentially problematic officers," the study says.

The study also warns, Winget said, "against irresponsible analysis and reporting, particularly when data are linked to individual officers."

Besides the lack of a way to identify officers, Peck said he was amazed that the data form doesn't include more precise time and location of the stop. The form now includes only two time categories, each in 12-hour intervals, and sector and beat locations.

"To get anything meaningful from the survey, you need to be as exact as possible on time and location," he said. "A 12-hour window is utterly useless."

Williams, D-Las Vegas, said even without officer identities on the forms, the study is a step forward and should show the extent of problems with racial profiling.

Dick McCorkle, chairman of the criminal justice department at University of Nevada, Las Vegas, will analyze the data and compare the stops to the populations of the areas where the traffic stops occurred.