Sunday Morning Coffee | Racial Profiling | Aug. 22 | 9 a.m.
by Sunday Morning Coffee | Aug 20, 2010 12:23pm
(2) Comments | Commenting has expired
Posted to: Opinion, Podcast, Live Broadcast
Hartford City Councilman Luis Cotto and a coalition of advocacy groups are trying to pass an ordinance against racial profiling in the city. A majority favored the idea at last week’s public hearing, while Hartford Police Chief Daryl K. Roberts later spoke against it. If there’s already a state racial profiling law on the books, why is this ordinance necessary in Hartford? Has the state law failed?
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Our thanks to special guests Shahid Buttar of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee and Stephen M. Cox, Ph.D. of the CCSU criminology department.
Resources:
Hartford Advocate, June 29, 2010 | Do Hartford Police Need More Anti-Profiling Requirements?
Courant July 28, 2009 | Profiling Law Unravels: Few Police Departments Still Provide Data
Hartford Common Council considers civil rights reforms
Bill of Rights Defense Committee
The Alvin W. Penn Racial Profiling Prohibition Act
(2) Comments
posted by: Doug Hardy | August 20, 2010 4:13pm
hello doctor!
I’m going to try to add a few links to provide some background material for this show ... but as I understand it the advocates of the ordinance say the issue of racial profiling goes deeper than arrests.
The data that is not being made available - and which the Hartford ordinance seeks to make available - is the number of traffic and walking stops that have occurred that don’t otherwise lead to arrests, and the demographics of the people stopped.
On behalf of both CTNewsJunkie and the Journal Inquirer I have requested an electronic copy of that data from the HPD.
At the public hearing this week Sandra Staub of the ACLU in CT said that most of the state’s police departments have not been forwarding this data to the state, as is required by the statute currently on the books.
Anyway - thanks for the link. Give a listen on Sunday.
posted by: GoatBoyPHD | August 20, 2010 3:48pm
Are there stats to back it up?
Based on Wikipedia, Hartford’s population is 40% Hispanic, 38% Black, 18% non-Hispanic White and 4% Other.
The arrest stats for 2007 are 15% for whites (-3% from population distribution), 41% for Hispanics (+1%) and 43% for Blacks (+5%) and 1% for other(-3%).
Looks in the ballpark of even distribution to me.
Here are the published arrest stats for 2007 (racial totals on last page for 11,611 arrests)