Today the Chicago Tribune is confirming what we already knew,African-Americans and Latinos are more likely to be pulled over by police than whites.Civil rights groups are once again pressuring state government to hold police departments across the state, and especially in Chicago accountable for their targeted searches.
Last year was the first time police agencies were required to report their "hit rate," or how often their searches actually turn up drugs, weapons, stolen goods or other illegal materials. According to the Tribune report, in 2007 statewide data showed that compared with whites, police agencies searched blacks three times more often and Hispanics more than twice as often. But police discovered illicit goods roughly twice as often when whites agreed to searches.
The best part of the entire report is that apparently Latinos are the most suspicious individuals to state police.Harvey Grossman, legal director for the ACLU of Illinois said: "Officers are more trusting of whites than they are of blacks, and they are particularly suspicious of Hispanics- It’s clear from the data that officers require less certainty when they ask Latinos to be searched than they do whites, there are more stringent standards for whites."
SO, I guess we should meet the police half way and work on being less "suspicious" … any suggestions on how we can possibly be less threatening to our hit happy friends?