Keker & Van Nest LLP

'KVN ASSISTS ACLU IN OBTAINING GROUND-BREAKING SETTLEMENT'
By John M. Broder

New York Times National

February 28, 2003

The Highway Patrol agrees to changes to settlement a lawsuit over racial profiling.

LOS ANGELES, Feb. 27 -- The California Highway Patrol agreed to stop using minor traffic violations as a pretext for searching cars for drugs under a settlement of a racial-profiling lawsuit announced today.

The agency will also extend a ban on so-called consent searches, in which officers ask motorists for permission to search their cars even if there is no probable cause to do so.

The American Civil Liberties Union, which filed the class-action suit three years ago on behalf of African-American and Latino motorists who said they were the victims of racial profiling by highway patrol officers, called the agreement a landmark in civil liberties law.

''This is a ground-breaking settlement,'' said Jon B. Streeter, the civil liberties union's main lawyer in the case. ''While there have been quite a few racial-profiling cases around the country in the last 10 years, none of them have resulted in the kinds of reforms we've gotten the C.H.P. to agree to here.''

Under the settlement, the highway patrol will also compile comprehensive statistics on each traffic stop, including the driver's race, reason for the stop, whether a search was conducted and the legal basis for the search.

In addition, the agency will name an auditor to analyze information traffic stops and the records of individual officers to identify any who might be engaging in racial profiling. The auditor will report directly to the commissioner of the highway patrol.

The patrol, in a statement today, did not admit that it practiced racial profiling and noted that the accord did not require it to pay damages. It will pay $875,000 in legal fees and other court costs for the case that was filed in Federal District Court in San Jose.

''Nothing during this three-year litigation established a pattern or practice of racial profiling by the C.H.P.,'' said D. O. Helmick, commissioner of the patrol. ''The C.H.P. reaffirms its commitment to provide service to the public and treat people respectfully and fairly.''

The patrol said just 2 percent of traffic stops and other ''public contacts'' resulted in searches. Of those, it said, 99.9 percent occur after an arrest or the impounding of a vehicle involved in a crime.

The primary plaintiff in the case, Curtis Rodriguez, said accord would make highways safer for all drivers.

''Latino and African-American motorists will no longer have to live in fear of being stopped and searched simply because of the color of their skin,'' Mr. Rodriguez said.

Mr. Rodriguez of San Jose, a lawyer, was stopped and searched by patrol officers in June 1998. He said he saw a number of other Latino drivers stopped in the same area of Highway 152 just before he was pulled over.

Officials of the civil liberties union said the highway patrol's agreement to stop asking drivers' permission to search their cars was a first in the nation. Civil liberties lawyers say the so-called consent searches, although the United States Supreme Court has ruled them permissible, are inherently coercive because of the disparity in power between an officer and a motorist.

Commissioner Helmick stopped such searches in 2001, after studies showed that Latinos in parts of California were about three times as likely to be searched by C.H.P. officers as whites. The accordment extends that moratorium three years.

Mark Schlosberg, director of police policy practices at the A.C.L.U. of Northern California, said he hoped that the agreement would set a standard for police departments across the state.

''Already data collected locally, even by police departments in diverse and progressive cities such as San Francisco and Sacramento, demonstrates large disparities in the rates at which African-American and Latino motorists are stopped and searched,'' Mr. Schlosberg said.