The Campaign to End Racial Profiling

This summer saw the expansion of the ACLU-WV's Campaign to End Racial Profiling. As a law student and intern, I have been proud to be a part of this important campaign. Before discussing some of the campaign's developments, I would like to briefly discuss our general outlook and strategy.

Naturally, with many civil liberties issues, law enforcement is viewed as "the enemy," "the opposition," the "hurdle that has to be overcome." After all, countless civil liberties issues, and especially racial profiling, involve monitoring and challenging police power. We have, however, shied away from viewing our campaign through this lens. The Campaign has made efforts to reach out to law enforcement, and has consistently argued that we are not trying to promote hostility between law enforcement and communities, but we are trying to bring them together. This is not about who is right and who is wrong, it is about moving forward with solutions that protect the rights of West Virginians and that bolster relations between law enforcement and communities.

This approach can be seen in the particular positions that we have adopted. Consider our position that consent searches should be banned or, at the least, people should be warned of their right to refuse consent prior to a consent search. Our position is not only that consent searches undermine our right to be free from baseless searches; they also harm community and law enforcement relations. People feel that they are treated unfairly when they are intimidated into saying "ok" when asked the classic question, "do you mind if I search your car?" This sense of unfairness promotes distrust and conflict between communities and law enforcement, something that helps no one. West Virginia and its law enforcement benefit when citizens feel that they can trust and rely on the police, not when they feel that they are constantly targeted for baseless searches. We hope that this moderate and conciliatory approach will help us to bring people together so as to push for legislative reform of criminal procedure in the upcoming years. After all, our goal is not simply to be right, it is to convince others that we are right.

But let us not forget the central goal of our campaign: to ensure that law enforcement uses objective evidence when ferreting out crime, not skin color. Stops and searches can be humiliating and intrusive and people should not be subjected to them unless they have caused an officer to reasonably think that they have done something wrong. The assumption that a person is a criminal because he is a minority is intolerable in a society that claims to embrace equality and liberty.

Our efforts to promote reform and to build community and law enforcement relations will culminate on September 10th with our Symposium on Community and Law Enforcement Relations, which will take place at West Virginia State University at 6 p.m. Chief Webster of the Charleston Police Department has agreed to be a panelist at the event, as have Kenneth Hale of the NAACP-WV, Dr. Stephen Haas of the West Virginia Division of Criminal Justice Services, and Ronald Hampton of the National Black Police Association in Washington D.C. We are hoping that members of the Select Committee on Minority Issues will also be joining the panel. The symposium will promote discussion and dialogue between people of different perspectives on law enforcement policy and we hope that the event will move us one step closer to the adoption of the legislation that we have researched and developed.

In tandem with the symposium, we are organizing Know Your Rights Seminars to inform people of their constitutional rights when stopped, searched and arrested. A seminar has been conducted in Martinsburg, and we have two more seminars scheduled for September 24th in Beckley and Bluefield. We also have presented a forum on racial profiling at the NAACP State Convention. I have found that West Virginians are not only eager to discuss their constitutional rights when encountering law enforcement, they are also eager to exercise them and to take a stand against police misconduct.

Litigation is also an important part of our campaign. This summer I have had the opportunity to work on multiple Fourth Amendment cases involving consent searches and police misconduct. These cases not only send a message that West Virginians' value their constitutional rights, but they also deter law enforcement from committing misconduct. I have learned so much working with ACLU Legal Director Terri Baur. Under her direction I performed research on consent search law in West Virginia's State Constitution and have crafted an argument for a consent search warning requirement that we hope can be used in future litigation.

The upcoming West Virginia Supreme Court decision in Bumpus, a case involving security guards profiling young African American teenagers visiting a mall, is also an important case on racial profiling and is one that we should all monitor closely. The same holds true for Lee v. South Charleston, a case involving a young African American that was subject to an unconstitutional strip search on the side of the road.

In the end, if we succeed in nothing else, we will have promoted dialogue, discussion, and thought about minority rights, law enforcement power, and privacy interests. In a country where apathy seems to be the beverage of choice, this is certainly an accomplishment. Dialogue and discussion is also the necessary predicate of any meaningful change in law or policy. After all, most people really do not want to live in a state or a country that denies freedoms and equality - sometimes it just takes a little pressure and persuasion to make them realize it.