Posted on 02/26/2004 6:35:23 AM PST by JesseHousman
WASHINGTON | Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio, introduced a bill Wednesday that would ban racial profiling by law enforcement officials, and a competing bill due to be introduced today would allow profiling victims to sue the government.
Voinovich bill would ban racial profiling The Voinovich legislation, co-sponsored with Sen. John Breaux, D-La., would prohibit federal, state and local officials from targeting individuals based solely on race, ethnicity or national origin. It would create a racial profiling awareness program that would educate state and local law enforcement leaders on the negative effect of racial profiling and a task force within the Justice Department to deal with the issue. States would have to set up a mechanism for residents to complain about profiling cases.
"This is the source of so many communities being at odds," Voinovich said. "We still have problems in Ohio in some communities — we think we don't have them.
"I think every community needs to review what they are doing in this area."
The bill provides an exemption for law enforcement to "protect the country and its people from any threat, be it foreign or domestic, including matters of homeland security, and the tracking and identification of" terrorist organizations.
Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., and Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., will introduce their own racial profiling bill today — timed almost to the three-year anniversary in which the new President Bush denounced racial profiling in a joint session of Congress — that would go even farther. Their bill would allow victims of profiling to sue law enforcement officials and require departments to collect data on profiling, both measures that many civil rights groups support. Their bill also would ban profiling based on religion.
Julie Fernandes, senior policy analyst and general counsel with the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, said the data helps departments see if they have a problem and is a good tool for discussions between the community and the police. The conference is a coalition of 180 civil and human rights groups.
Laura Murphy, director of the American Civil Liberties Union in Washington, said the explicit right to sue is a key component to fight profiling.
"For better or worse, we've been able to move police departments as a result of these important lawsuits," she said. "On balance, (Voinovich's bill) is a good forward step, but it is not as useful as the Feingold-Conyers bill."
Voinovich and Breaux said law enforcement agencies fear that collecting the data would be a burden and the data would not necessarily yield correct conclusions. They said they wanted to create a bipartisan compromise that the split Senate might stomach. The Justice Department and White House have not taken a position on the bill.
"It may not go as far as some would like, and it may go too far for others," Breaux said. But, he said, theirs is the "one that can pass."
Civil rights groups hope that both bills will help renew the momentum toward making racial profiling illegal. Three years ago, Bush and Attorney General John Ashcroft both were publicly denouncing the act. Conyers and Feingold had introduced legislation to ban it and Voinovich and Sen. Mike DeWine, R-Ohio, introduced a bill that established an educational awareness program. However, efforts stalled after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.
"We're very happy to see this as a critical issue and it is a critical issue right now in this post-9/11 context," Fernandes said. "I think mostly, we're encouraged."
This RINO is a boil on the arse of progress that is in dire need of lancing!
The "War on Terror" is a joke!
Two words come to mind: Stupid and ignorant.
Federal Immigration Officers and US Border Patrol Agents must base their enforcement actions solely on national origin. How in the hell can you enforce immigration law if you can’t question people based on their (other than US) national origin?
Bills like this are an example of why the US senate should be subject to mandatory drug testing.
Ah, say the black racist thugs and their white liberal running dogs, that can't be, they must violate the law at about the same rate? These same thugs will tell you next month when 64 colleges play basketball teams where 3 to 5 players on every squad are black, that it is a variance from normal population distribution because blacks are different than whites when it comes to basketball.
With the exception of my Congressman (Bob Ney) the major Ohio Republicans are all tax -sucking RINOS, including Taft, Voinovich and what's his name? Oh yeah, De Plane! er, DeWine.
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