Features

SAN FRANCISCO — The California Highway Patrol’s commissioner ordered a ban on some car searches Thursday, a move civil liberties groups say is a tacit admission that officers single out minority drivers for unfair treatment. 

CHP Commissioner D.O. “Spike” Helmick issued a six-month moratorium on “consent searches” – the kind that officers can conduct only if they receive permission from a driver. Officers will still search a car if they have probable cause that it was involved in a crime. 

Helmick said the moratorium does not reflect any concern that CHP officers target minority drivers. 

A team of CHP managers recommended the ban after a Monday review of search data from last July through March, he said. State police began collecting the search data in February 1999 following public and political concerns that officers stop and search Hispanics and blacks more often than whites. 

Helmick said a preliminary review of the data showed CHP officers conducted 1,370 consent searches since last July, “a very small number when you look at the almost three million traffic stops we make each year.” 

The American Civil Liberties Union says it know what’s going on – that CHP officers target minorities for searches. The group has brought a lawsuit in U.S. District Court alleging racial profiling by state troopers around San Jose. 

The ACLU is focusing on CHP drug task force officers. The group has interpreted data the CHP handed over as part of its case to show drug officers search Hispanics and blacks at far greater rates in some highway corridors. 

In a court filing, the ACLU said after being stopped, Hispanics were nearly four times more likely to be searched than whites in the central coast area that includes Highway 101 — and that blacks were more than twice as likely to be searched. The ACLU said CHP data show similar rates in a Central Valley area that includes Highway 5. 

“The drug interdiciton officers have the most severe rates of racial profiling,” said ACLU lawyer Michelle Alexander. “Officers are encouraged to use minor traffic violations to stop motorists and then get consent to search their cars for drugs. ... they’re operating on a hunch, on a guess, on a stereotype.” 

The ACLU has argued similar search cases against highway officers in states including Illinois, New Jersey, and Maryland. 

“I do not agree with their numbers, but I am not going to try that court case out of court,” Helmick said. “They’re wrong, they’re dead wrong. And I’d be more than happy to prove it.”