Utah's law designed to pin down whether police practice racial profiling is to sunset this year. But the issue could rise again through a proposed survey of those who have had contact with law officers.

A one-time appropriation of $45,000 for the Commission on Criminal and Juvenile Justice to conduct the study made it onto a list that will be considered by the Executive Appropriations Committee.

Rep. Jennifer Seelig, D-Salt Lake, said the survey would look at variables including race, age and gender in statistics on traffic stops, "So the breadth of it is wide."

The survey would be based on a random sample of those who have had contact with law enforcement in the past year, Seelig said.

The state survey, which would be conducted by a private company, would be similar to a survey conducted by the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics for 2002. That survey found no statistical difference among black, white and Hispanic drivers when it came to the likelihood of being stopped by police. However, it also found that once stopped, Hispanics and blacks were more likely to be handcuffed than white drivers.

"Some of the most interesting things they found were in post-stop behavior," said Julie Christenson, research analyst at CCJJ. "That would be something we'd want to look at here. Even the perception of those being stopped. That can be used to train law enforcement."

Last year, minority advocates had criticized a legislative interim committee's vote to recommend scrapping the existing program, much of which will sunset this year without action, after it was called ineffective.

Utah's 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's license.

AnnaJane Arroyo, an Ogden-area community advocate, said the prominence of the immigration debate has many in the Hispanic community worried about potential racial profiling.

"It is a concern to the minority community," she said. "You can't tell if a brown person is Hispanic, a Mexican immigrant, a Puerto Rican. ... It at least needs to be looked at."

Whether or not the it finds evidence of profiling, the proposed survey, Arroyo said, would provide a way to "at least look at the issue and work together to try to get some resolution to some of the concerns that we have."

Even though the survey is near the bottom — 13 out of 16 priorities — it's "very encouraging" that it made the list, said Palmer DePaulis, executive director of the Department of Community and Culture.

"It's a good step forward," DePaulis said. "We'll have to work now with Executive Appropriations. We need to justify it."

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