ACLU Opens Branch Office To Address Racial Profiling

BEMIDJI, Minn. — In this neck of northern Minnesota, some Indians complain of being stopped for DWI — meaning “Driving While Indian” — a sly way of saying they were pulled over for no good reason.

Though authorities deny any discrimination, the American Civil Liberties Union of Minnesota has opened its first office outside the Twin Cities, solely to gather profiling complaints.

“This is a situation that stinks in Minnesota,” said Charles Samuelson, executive director of the Minnesota ACLU. “At every opportunity where discretion can enter into it, the people of color lose.”

Law officers say they ticket or arrest people who break the law.

“I can assure you that in my experience in three years as chief of police I have not seen any racial profiling by my department or the sheriff’s department,” said Bruce Preece, the Bemidji police chief. “We do not condone it.”

Crime blamed on poverty

In Cass County, where Indians are 11 percent of the population but accounted for more than half the arrests, County Attorney Earl Maus offered a reason: The poverty of much of the Indian population. “People who live in poverty generally have a higher rate of crime,” he said.

In South Dakota, Indians have complained that officers were using a law against hanging objects from rear-view mirrors to pull over drivers.

Traffic stops tracked

An analysis by the University of Minnesota and the nonprofit Council on Crime and Justice of regional traffic stops in 2002 found Indians were stopped and searched at disproportionately higher rates than white drivers, though the rate of finding contraband in an Indian vehicle was no higher.

But Preece said the traffic stop analysis underestimated the number of Indians who drive through his city.

Seeking out stories

The ACLU hired a coordinator, Audrey Thayer, in May to look into the profiling complaints. The office opened in Bemidji on Sept. 7 in a two-year, $190,000 effort.

Thayer, a 52-year-old Ojibwe woman, spends most of her time seeking out stories. She has canvassed the poor at a soup kitchen, questioned Indians waiting to see relatives in jail, and handed out fliers to teens hanging out late at night.

Thayer said she often hears of law enforcement officers who use feeble excuses, like burned-out license plate lights, to stop and question Indian drivers.

Tom Johnson, president of the Council on Crime and Justice, said one reason Indians are being pulled over more may be that law enforcement officers believe that Indians — because of their high rates of alcoholism — are more likely to drink and drive.

Also, because many Indians are poor, they may be more likely to drive cars with broken equipment, and that may be giving police excuses to pull them over, he said.

Maus said of the ACLU project: “If they can come in here and show us some way to do things better, we’d be grateful.”