Police to collect racial data on pedestrians Police to collect racial data on pedestrians (December 15, 2004)

Some critics say that it's still not enough; cops moving toward less, rather than, more data on people stopped

by Bill D'Agostino

As part of its racial data reports, the Palo Alto Police Department will likely keep recording information on pedestrians that officers encounter.

That would represent a moderate reversal to a recently announced policy shift that drew criticism.

Since July 2000, patrol officers have written on small cards the race and sex of everyone they question, pull over, cite or arrest. Earlier this month, Police Chief Lynne Johnson announced she was greatly curtailing that data. Rather than collecting information on all "enforcement" contacts, officers would only record data on drivers of vehicles they pull over, using a computer program in patrol cars.

But members of the city's Human Relations Commission, critical of that new policy during their quarterly meeting with the chief last Thursday, requested that officers continue collecting data on pedestrians. Commissioners said they frequently hear reports from people of color complaining they are "just walking down the street" when an officer questions them.

The chief said she would study and likely adopt the change.

"I think that's a very valid suggestion they made," Johnson said on Friday. "If you stop and think about it, if an officer is going to racially profile, there's no doubt before they stop and talk to someone walking down a street what their race is."

By contrast, when officers pull over vehicles, they usually don't know the race of the drivers, she added.

Regardless, data on numerous other people -- such as passengers of cars pulled over, suspects arrested in homes or skateboarders cited with tickets -- will no longer be collected.

The police chief told the commission she is curtailing the reports for a number of reasons: the comprehensive data is unreliable, a burden on administrators during tough budget times and hard to compare with other departments, since it's more than what other jurisdictions record.

As an example, Johnson noted the possibility of an officer arresting a shoplifter who has been detained by a security guard at the Stanford Shopping Center. The officer has no control over the race of the suspect, but still must record the encounter.

"Therefore, I believe it's misleading and could lead people to believe that our officers are racially profiling," Johnson said. She also pointed out that many officers were also forgetting, or not having the time, to collect all the information requested.

Despite such rationales, commissioners were disappointed to hear of the change.

"We need more data, not less data," Commissioner Adam Atito said.

Commissioners also questioned the timing of the change, coming when watchdogs are shining a bright light on the department. Two Asian-American officers are facing felony battery charges for allegedly beating a black man, who had committed no crime, after pulling him from his parked car near El Camino Real. The police chief has argued race wasn't a factor in that incident.

Still, commissioners were pleased that their recommendation for additional data appeared to get through. "That's a good step forward," Atito said.

Also during the meeting, the police chief apologized to the commission -- the closest the city has to a police oversight group -- for failing to alert members beforehand of the policy shift. Many commissioners, including some who regularly meet with top police officials, learned of it through the media and felt their trust had been violated.

"This is a tough situation here," Commissioner Lakiba Pittman said. "This is kind of moving in the wrong direction ... I'm not sure how we recover from that or how we re-establish the promise of trying to bridge the gap."

"I apologize for that," Johnson said. "That's a very valid criticism."

Staff Writer Bill D'Agostino can be e-mailed at bdagostino@paweekly.com.

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