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By Ricardo Lujan and Erica Franks March 01. 2015 12:01AM GUEST OPINION: Police, community should work to prevent profiling Every day in Southern Oregon, hundreds of law enforcement personnel go to work, dedicated to doing a professional job of protecting public safety. And every day in Southern Oregon, many of the people they are supposed to protect are fearfully hoping to avoid contact with those officers — not because those people have done anything wrong, but because they are afraid of profiling based on race, ethnicity, sexual orientation or other factors. Many other cities and counties across America are experiencing intense tension between law enforcement and communities. That makes it hard for law enforcement officials to get the information they need to do an effective job, while leaving many adults and children as worried about encounters with police as they are about encounters with criminals. Instead of waiting for a crisis, we in Southern Oregon can work together now, as partners, to strengthen trust, prevent profiling and protect public safety for all. Neither the state nor local cities or counties keep or publish a lot of statistics about profiling. But here are a few facts that suggest the dimensions of the problem. While African Americans and whites in America use marijuana at approximately the same rate, nearly four times more African Americans are arrested for possession, according to a report by The Sentencing Project. African Americans in Oregon are 70 percent more likely than other residents to be stopped at least once per year, according to an Urban League study. Nearly one in three LGBT people and people living with HIV under the age of 30 reports hostile treatment in their most recent encounters with police, according to a national survey by Lambda Legal, a public interest law center. A year and a half after an 18-year-old Latino armed only with knife was shot and killed by Medford police in 2012, Oregon Health and Science University conducted a survey asking Latinos in the city about the relationship between their community and the police department. Thirty-seven percent said the relationship is “not at all” positive, 48 percent said it is only “somewhat positive,” while 8 percent said it is "very positive." Profiling is not confined to encounters with police on the street. Groups profiled by race, ethnicity or other factors receive harsher treatment, on average, than their counterparts at every step of the criminal justice process, including arrests, choice of charges, pretrial release and bail, sentencing and supervision of probation. Does this mean that most law enforcement officers, district attorneys, judges and other criminal justice officials are consciously discriminating? No, although undoubtedly some are. It means that bias toward people of color, LGBT people, Muslims, and other groups in our society has existed for a long time and can’t be controlled simply by declaring good intentions. Prevention of profiling requires intensive training, hiring of a diverse workforce, two-way communication with the community, and other measures. Community groups in the Rogue Valley stand ready to work with local officials to help make progress on solutions like those. We also invite local criminal justice officials and all local residents to join a broad coalition of community groups in supporting a package of three proposed bills now before the state Legislature. These bills, HB 2001, 2002, and 2003, start with the basics. They would establish a statewide definition of profiling — that it is, using someone’s race, ethnicity, religious affiliation, national origin, language, housing status, sexual orientation, gender or gender identity as a basis to stop, question or search them. The legislation would require law enforcement to keep records when they stop someone who meets one of those definitions. That data would then be compiled by the state, which could investigate if a pattern of profiling may be taking place without being corrected locally. The initial coalition supporting these proposals includes Oregon Action, United Church of Christ, Basic Rights Oregon, Causa, Asian Pacific Network of Oregon (APANO), the Oregon AFL-CIO, and the Center for Intercultural Organizing. A recent letter to the editor declared that the writer was pro-police and implied that anyone who wants a fairer, more effective criminal justice system must be anti-police. The community groups that want to address profiling are pro-police too. We want safety for our neighborhoods and households. We honor the courage it takes to work in law enforcement. And we believe that passage of the proposed legislation — HB 2001, 2002, and 2003 — will benefit both law enforcement and local communities by helping to prevent profiling and ensuring that our criminal justice system is effective and fair to all. Ricardo Lujan is a board member of Oregon Action. Erica Franks is a member of the Black Student Union at Southern Oregon University. What do you think? Have an opinion on this topic? Send a letter to the editor at www.mailtribune.com/sendletter or email [email protected]. http://www.mailtribune.com/article/20150301/OPINION/150309978 © 2015 Copyright © 1995-2011 Crain Communications Inc. All Rights Reserved. Terms of Use Privacy Statement -->