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Fact Sheets End Racial Profiling Act of 2007
Fact Sheet on the End Racial Profiling
Act
December 12, 2007
In his address to a joint session of Congress
on February 27, 2001, President George W. Bush declared that
“racial profiling is wrong and we will end it in America.”
The End Racial Profiling Act of 2007 offers a reasonable and
measured response to this destructive practice.
The End Racial Profiling Act would, for the first time, prohibit
the use of racial profiling by federal, state and local law
enforcement agencies and agents. The bill defines racial profiling
to include "the practice of a law enforcement agent or agency
relying, to any degree, on race, ethnicity, national origin,
or religion" during investigatory activities, but is careful
to exclude from the definition cases where "there is trustworthy
information, relevant to the locality and timeframe, that
links a person of a particular race, ethnicity, national origin,
or religion to an identified incident or scheme."
The bill allows the United States or an individual injured
by racial profiling to bring a civil action for injunctive
relief in federal court. Proof that the investigatory activities
of law enforcement agents had a disparate impact on a minority
group is prima facie evidence of a violation. A court may
award prevailing plaintiffs attorney’s fees and experts fees.
The bill also requires federal law enforcement agencies, as
well as state and local law enforcement agencies that wish
to receive federal law enforcement funding, to maintain policies
and procedures to eliminate racial profiling. The policies
must include training on racial profiling issues, the collection
of data on racial profiling, and procedures for receiving,
investigating, and responding to complaints alleging racial
profiling.
Racial profiling experts advise that a federal response to
racial profiling should emphasize transparency of information,
and improved cooperation between citizens and law enforcement
agencies, while giving states and localities the tools and
options to tailor a plan to combat racial profiling to the
particular needs of their communities. The bill therefore
offers states and localities receiving federal law enforcement
funding a choice between implementing either an administrative
complaint procedure or an independent auditor program for
racial profiling claims.
The administrative complaint procedure would allow any person
who believes there has been a violation of the ban on racial
profiling to file a complaint with an independent review board,
which will investigate the complaint and issue a public decision.
The decision would protect the identities of the individuals
involved.
An independent auditor would receive full access to the documents
of the law enforcement agency. The auditor would issue a public
report each year addressing the efforts of the grantee to
combat racial profiling and recommending changes to its policies,
and the law enforcement agency would be required to issue
a public response to the report. The bill permits a locality
to opt-in to the administrative complaint procedure or independent
auditor program of its State, or join with one or more other
localities to develop and use a single procedure or program.
Finally, the collection of data is essential to efforts to
monitor the government's progress toward eliminating racial
profiling. The bill therefore authorizes the Attorney General
to issue regulations for the collection of data on racial
profiling by federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies.
The Bureau of Justice Statistics must issue an annual report
to the Congress and the public analyzing the data collected,
and must provide the data collected under the Act along with
each report. The Attorney General must also issue an annual
report to the Congress and the public addressing the state
of the racial profiling problem in this country. The bill
specifically provides that the identifying information of
any law enforcement officer or any other individual involved
in an investigatory activity shall not be released to the
public.
The End Racial Profiling Act is cosponsored in the Senate
by Robert Menendez (D-NJ), John Kerry (D-MA), Chris Dodd (D-CT),
Debbie Stabenow (D-MI), Barack Obama (D-IL), Maria Cantwell
(D-WA), Dick Durbin (D-IL), Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ), Barbara
Mikulski (D-MD), Ted Kennedy (D-MA), Sherrod Brown (D-OH),
Ben Cardin (D-MD), and Hillary Clinton (D-NY).
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