Maine's Advisory Committee on Bias Based Profling Gets Schooled

Last week, guest, Professor Jack McDevitt from The Institute on Race and Justice at Northeastern University came to Maine to present information to Maine's Advisory Committee on Bias-based Profiling by Law Enforcement Officers and Law Enforcement Agencies.  He spoke about things as basic as defining bias based policing, and racial profiling, and spoke in depth about his extensive experience advising states and law enforcement agencies on how to study and adress this serious issue.

Maine's Advisory Committee (on which I sit as a representative of the ACLU of MAINE) came together this year as a result of legislation supported by the ACLU of MAINE, NAACP, Immigrant Legal Advocacy Project, Centro Latino, Center for Preventing Hate and others based on long standing concerns by Maine's racial, ethnic and religious minority communities about disproportionate targeting by police. 

While the bill initially would have required data collection, improved training, and creation of a statewide policy on bias-based profiling, among other things, the legislation was scaled back to ultimately create a stakeholder group, including members of law enforcement, the Commissioner of Public Safety, and representatives from particularly effected communities to study the issue and take steps, if necessary, to address the probelm.  

I have been pleased, in the first two meetings, to see members of the Committee be able to be open to listening to one another, and able to be blunt where disagreements exist.
 
I have discovered some interesting facts, such as

• Maine has a model policy about equal treatment, but nothing specifically addressing bias based policing or on racial profiling. 
• Nationally, people are, on average, 2.5 times more likely to be searched if non-white than if white.
• Only about 10-15% of searches result in something (contraband) being found.  As Jack McDevitt put it, "The other 85% of the searches just end up sending someone home pissed."  
• Based on the recomendations from the NAACP, Jack suggests that police officers tell those they stop the reason for the stop to dispel tension or preconceptions about bias.  If the person stopped indicates they feel they were stopped because of bias, rather than become defensive or combative, to say something like, "That may have happened to you in the past, but I pulled you over because of ________."  This acknowledges the possibility that the person has actually been targeted wrongly in the past while allowing the officer to state clearly that, at least in their case, they were acting legitimately.

 In the next meeting, we will be setting some concrete goals, including how to go about collecting and analyzing data to shed light on the extent of bias-based profiling in our state and deciding whether to create a model statewide policy on the issue.  Though the Committee was slow getting started, I am hopeful that we will shed light on the extent and effects of  this despicable practice, and create concrete mechanisms to assess and address the problem.

One thing that Jack said more than once at the meeting is that the majority of officers engaging in bias based profiling are doing so subconciously.  There are very few who are blatantly acting out their racism in a knowing and intentional manner.  This fact is both discouraging and a relief.  It's discouraging because the idea of changing subconcious behavior is daunting...but a relief because we all want the officers protecting and serving our communities to be good, fair people.  

Next up - we hope to create and conduct a Public Contact Survey – that explores all contacts between the police and the community to explore difference of experience.  

It will be interesting to see how this statewide work dovetails with the nationally based work of my ACLU of MAINE colleague Brianna Twofoot, around the federal End Racial Profiling Act (ERPA).