Politics and community organizing are based on a culture of dishonesty. The latest example of this truism is the state racial profiling law, which will be one of the biggest issues at the State Capitol during the 2012 legislative session that begins in February.
Racial and religious profiling is a serious issue. A Department of Justice report found that Blacks and Latinos are three to four times as likely to be searched, arrested and subjected to the use of force during traffic stops than whites. The Alvin W. Penn Act was named for the late state senator who introduced the bill after he was racially profiled by the Trumbull police in 1996.
The Penn Act calls for all police departments to submit reports on the demographics of the people who they subject to traffic stops. These reports are based on a compilation of traffic stop demographic data forms which must be filled out by patrol officers each time that they stop a car. Penn, who died in 2003, must be spinning in his grave as he sees what has become of this legislation. The law has been dormant for years due to a myriad of factors such as funding issues and the lack of compliance by police departments.
I am the founder of the Community Party. CP has been working to strengthen the Penn Act since 2010. Our group was the first to take up this issue. We are an unpaid group of volunteers whose only agenda is to enact public policies which will benefit state residents. Our motivation is simple – we are community residents and we will benefit from these policies, as will our family members, loved ones, friends and neighbors.
Our proposed Penn Act amendment addresses the aforementioned data collection and compliance issues but goes much further as it also includes enforcement provisions such as a traffic stop receipt, which would have to be given to any motorist who is stopped by the police.
The Department of Justice recently issued a report on the findings of their civil investigation of the East Haven police, who have been accused of racially profiling and brutalizing Latinos in that town ( a criminal investigation is expected to result in arrests soon).
The DOJ report found that EHPD officers have been lying on the demographic data forms, supporting the findings of a 2010 Yale Law School report which produced the same conclusion. The EHPD officers were entering Latino drivers as white in order to cover up their actions.
Our bill calls for the form to be modified and issued in triplicate, with a copy being given to the driver. The form would include the contact information of an independent subcommittee which would investigate racial profiling complaints. Individuals who filed the complaints would be able to remain anonymous. Our language also includes provisions which would address religious profiling and prevent individuals from being harassed about their immigration status.
We also want the state to establish a Penn Act and Racial Profiling Oversight Committee which would continue to address the layered issue of racial profiling. Traffic stops are just one tool of racially biased policing.
Unfortunately, other organizations and individuals see the Penn Act as a political football. Their desire is to run the ball into the end zone, spike it and do a touchdown dance – in other words, get credit for passing an amendment to the Penn Act and use that credit to advance their own self-serving political agandas.
Whether or not the bill which passes actually protects anyone from racially biased policing is a nonissue for them. Sandra Staub, Legal Director of the American Civil Liberities Union of Connecticut, has been leading a coalition including A Better Way Foundation and the Council on American-Islamic Relations which has been shopping around a watered down version of CP’s amendment at the State Capitol.
The ACLU legislation is based on the Rhode Island Traffic Stop Statistics Final Report, which was written by Jack McDevitt of the Institute on Race and Justice at Northeastern University. Staub and McDevitt talked about their bill at a December briefing by the Connecticut State Advisory Committee to the US Commission on Civil Rights (CP was not invited to this hearing because we did not do the required sucking up).
The briefings have turned out to be an informercial for McDevitt’s toothless Rhode Island model, which is based strictly on data collection and includes no enforcement provisions. The McDevitt report describes racial profiling as “a complex problem, either real or perceived. Staub met with CP in 2010 to discuss the Penn Act issue – we have included her on internal group emails. Yet Staub does not talk about CP publicly when she discusses the state racial profiling law.
During her testimony at the feds’ briefing she went into detail about how our bill mysteriously died in committee after making it to the Senate floor during the 2011 legislative session, while somehow avoiding mentioning the name of our group. Staub talked about the problematic history of data collection and compliance by police departments. She clearly demonstrated that she either does not recognize or is choosing to ignore a fatal flaw of the Penn Act.
The DOJ and Yale Law School reports clearly show that cops are lying on the demographic data form. The data is corrupt. CP’s traffic stop receipt would break the monopoly that the police currently have on the data. Citizens would now possess the same record of traffic stops that the cops have. McDevitt was asked what he thought about our traffic stop receipt concept, which is crucial to ensuring that patrol officers do not falsify the form. He said that a receipt would be “no benefit” – clearly he meant that the provision would be no benefit to him, because he wants his crappy bill to be the one that is passed by the Connecticut General Assembly.
Christine Stuart of CT News Junkie has imposed a blackout on CP because I confronted her privately and publicly about her site’s abysmal track record of covering issues which impact communities of color.
Stuart has created a revisionist history of the Penn Act issue which casts a white person (Staub) as the champion of the bill. Her article on the December briefing included the fabrication by the Connecticut Police Chiefs Association that our amendment would be too costly, as printers would have to be installed in police cruisers to produce the receipts.
The aforementioned components of our receipt provision would would not be costly at all. Gov. Dannel P. Malloy recently announced that $1.2 million in federal grant money has been found which is supposed to be used to fund the Penn Act. Estimates indicate that initial Penn Act revisions will cost $500,000 in 2012, with the cost declining to $ $200,000 to $300,000 a year.
Last summer Staub co-hosted “teach-ins” on our bill in Hartford with ABWF, CAIR and City Councilman Luis Cotto.The public announcement promoting the “teach-ins” in a local newspaper didn’t mention CP at all.
Finally, we also attempted to involve CAIR Executive Director Mongi Dhaouadi in our campaign (we have the emails to prove it). Dhaouadi responded by setting up a meeting with Malloy right after he was elected, presenting him with a list of Penn Act improvements and then announcing afterward that the meeting had taken place.
I want to make this clear – this is not about my hurt feelings or those of other CP members, who have been working tirelessly on our campaign to enforce the Penn Act. The selfish political games that are being played by the ACLU, ABWF, CAIR, federal and state bureaucrats, Cotto and Stuart will impact the public safety of people of color and religious minorities in Connecticut. These populations need a strong bill which will provide real protection against biased policing.
CP challenges politicians, state and federal officials, non-profits, activists and so called journalists in this state to start working for the people, instead of themselves (we won’t hold our breath waiting for that to happen). Forget about the end zone celebration. We will continue to expose and confront the culture of dishonesty which permeates city and state politics and community organizing. Count on it. We are providing regular updates on our Penn Act Facebook page.http://www.facebook.com/PennAct
David Samuels is the founder of the Community Party.
