July 14, 2006

License, Insurance Card, and Race, Please

By Marc Sheppard
Suffolk County, NY, police have announced a pilot program in which officers are recording the race of drivers stopped for routine traffic violations.  The initiative, which requires that officers make a visual determination of the suspect's race, is aimed at preventing officers from making determinations based upon a suspect's race. As reported by Newsday on 7/10/2006: Along with a driver's license plate number, vehicle description and other information, officers in two dozen Suffolk patrol units along the Long Island Expressway and Sunrise Highway have been asked to make a visual determination about the motorist's race and record it in their report. Suffolk Police Commissioner Richard Dormer explained the necessity of the strategy: "It's certainly not the policy of the Suffolk County Police Department to racially profile and our officers are specifically trained not to. But as a modern police agency, we should be able to prove that." So, according to the Commish, the officers...(Read Full Article)