Vol. 3, No. 17
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July 1, 2006
Nevada's Online State News Journal
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Racial Profiling In The Reno Police Department: Is It A Fact?
City Manager, Cops Say No, ACLU, NAACP Challenge That
by Johnny Gunn
The question of racial profiling comes to the surface regularly in the City of Reno, and some in the community are not willing to accept a report issued by the Reno Police Department (RPD) that there is little if any racial profiling done by its officers. A community meeting was held recently at the behest of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). The meeting was open to the public and was well attended.
There have been two surveys done within the past three years, but RPD only accepts information from one of them. It is a survey contracted by RPD and in their own survey it was determined that black citizens "in Reno are stopped at rates above an accepted range of what would constitute impartiality." The report also says that blacks and Hispanics "are at least twice as likely to be searched, asked to exit the vehicle, or be handcuffed following a stop as are whites." RPD and city officials then go on to say that none of this is racial profiling.
Reno City Manager Charles McNeely said the 2005 report was inconclusive. Others at the meeting said racial profiling goes on continuously by the RPD. Several people at the meeting, which was held at the Northeast Community Center gave examples from their own experiences. Some of the examples were graphic in detail. In one celebrated case in Reno, the brother of a gang member, he was not a gang member but was an A student who had never been in trouble, was stopped regularly. In a federal suit the city was forced to come up with bread to pay for the "profiling."
McNeely and Reno Police Chief Michael Poehlman had a meeting with members of the black community and representatives of the ACLU at City Hall days prior to the community center meeting. Poehlman and McNeely both said there would be continuing investigations and studies of the issue.
According to some at the meeting it is the veteran officers that seem to believe that a black or Hispanic person is automatically wrong. Many have called for continuing diversity training particularly for the older officers. During Hot August Nights the Reno Police tend to focus their attention on the Hispanic element, and in at least one instance that has led to serious physical violence.
In the other survey done following legislative action forcing most of the police agencies in Nevada to participate, Reno did not come on the right side of the issue. Following passage of AB500, the Attorney General had a statewide Traffic Stop Data Collection Study conducted by Richard C. McCorkle, Ph.D., Department of Criminal Justice, UNLV compiled. This was presented to the AG in January 2003.
In the sections dealing with Reno Police traffic stops, McCorkle found that black and Hispanic drivers were more likely than whites and Asians to be handcuffed during the stop. Black and Hispanic drivers were also more likely to be detained for longer periods of time. Arguments often refer to black and Hispanic people being more likely to commit crimes, but the survey said, "Drugs were less frequently seized during stops of blacks and Hispanics compared to whites."
Across all agencies, not just Reno Police, black drivers were searched at a high rate, "more than twice the rate of white drivers (9.5 percent compared to 3.9 percent). While the white population in Reno of those old enough to drive is about 73 percent and the black population of those old enough to drive is 2.4 percent, whites were stopped almost 74 percent while blacks were stopped at twice their population figure, 4.8 percent.
One of the most telling things about racial profiling is the humiliation factor. A simple traffic stop escalating to the point a driver is handcuffed is rare among white drivers. According to McCorkle white drivers were forced from their vehicles and handcuffed in about 3.5 percent of stops. Black drivers on the other hand were handcuffed 7.8 percent of the time. Police in Reno also force black drivers to allow searches of themselves and their vehicles far more often than white driver. White drivers were searched following traffic stops just four percent of the time while black drivers faced the same humiliation 11.4 percent of the time. The sad part of that information is that there were actual seizures in 39 percent of the white stops as opposed to just nine- percent of the black stops.
Many people at the recent public meeting held to discuss racial profiling by Reno Police have called for committees to be formed at the community level to create a level playing field for RPD officers and those in the community that feel they are being persecuted by the people paid to protect them. To accept a report paid for by Reno Police and not accept a far more in-depth report created at the State Attorney General's behest is an example of arrogance that shouldn't be tolerated by the City of Reno.
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