Committee scraps profiling program

A legislative committee voted Wednesday for the second time to recommend scrapping a statewide program aimed at pinning down the issue of racial profiling, which has been called ineffective.

Members of the interim Transportation Committee didn't vote on an alternative proposal to address racial profiling through a one-year statewide survey. However, it was suggested by Rep. Julie Fisher, R-Fruit Heights, that the survey is a "separate bill that can move forward at any time."

Following the hearing, Allyson Isom, deputy director of the Department of Community and Culture, said she anticipates the issue will be addressed during the 2007 Legislative session, though she didn't mention a specific sponsor.

"Unless we gather the data, unless we understand what is going on, we'll never know whether racial profiling is an issue," Isom said.

The current law, passed in 2002, requires law officers to note the race of those they stop, and gives people the option to mark their race on their driver license. In May, after hearing the state is collecting the wrong data, lawmakers voted to repeal or allow to sunset all parts of the law.

Wednesday, the committee opted to keep collecting the driver license race data after hearing that it is useful to courts in forming jury pools.

The survey they didn't vote on would be based on a federal model, and would include responses from a random sample of those who have had contact with law enforcement in the past year.

During the hearing, some lawmakers questioned the need for collecting the data, and whether the new proposal would be more effective.

Mike Haddon, director of research for the Commission on Criminal and Juvenile Justice, said the data from the survey would help identify discrepancies between the treatment of minorities and non-minorities. If discrepancies are found, the survey could provide a framework for addressing them through officer training, he said.

"In the survey, what we are going to try to do is quite different from what we were doing," he said. "It drills down into some of the issues that really get to the heart of unequal treatment It would give us a global perspective of where we are in the state of Utah."

While the survey would have a fiscal note, Haddon said he did not yet know what the cost to the state would be. The survey would include information such as the types of stops, whether people are given warnings or citations, whether they are arrested, or whether their vehicle is searched, he said.