Campaign to End Racial Profiling: Advocating for Fair, Effective Police Practices that Improve the Safety of Our Communities
TCJC Bridges Information Gaps Between Community and Police on Racial Profiling
BY MOLLY TOTMAN
Our Campaign to End Racial Profiling works to ensure that our state law enforcement agencies are providing value-driven police services throughout Texas. Effective community policing practices allow both officers and civilians to assist each other in encouraging communication and improving the protection of the public.
The Texas Criminal Justice Coalition is the only entity in the state compiling and analyzing racial profiling data from every Texas law enforcement agency. We annually report and analyze so-called “consent search practices” of Texas law enforcement, including breakdowns by racial categories. Too often, these police-public interactions are the entry point into the criminal justice system.
TCJC enjoys the distinction of analyzing data from more law enforcement agencies every year than any government agency or academic institution in the United States. TCJC has become the source for law enforcement, state policy-makers, and the media on racial profiling data analysis and related issues, and we are most proud of the fact that even those who disagree with our policy aims accept and use our data analyses.
Use of Data to Improve Practices
In March, 2007, we released our annual racial profiling analysis titled Smarter Policing Practices: Creating a Safer, More Unified Texas. The study includes five policy recommendations of best practices that we have developed throughout the past four years while we have served as Texas’ repository. We based these recommendations on feedback from both community members and law enforcement, supported by key data findings from our quantitative research. To download a copy of this and other reports our Campaign has released, please visit our publicatons page.
Benefits of Collaborative Work:
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In May, 2006, Ana Yáñez-Correa and I became instructors for the Capital Area Council of Governments (CAPCOG) and have trained police officers about these processes. We are really proud that CAPCOG asked us to instruct classes for police officers and sheriffs in areas of “Stereotyping in Law Enforcement” (a 4-hour course, which is required to be taken by law enforcement officers in accordance with Texas’ racial profiling law), and “Multiculturalism” (an 8-hour course). In addition to presenting required materials from an already existing curriculum, we introduce information that covers racial profiling issues we work on, including data collection/analysis and consent search issues. The trainings have been very well received and have been immensely useful to TCJC in our understanding of what goes on in the field by law enforcement themselves.
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Based on feedback we received from officers at these trainings, as well as from many hundreds of calls to TCJC from police agencies seeking technical assistance with the State’s racial profiling law, we produced and widely disseminated a standardized chart that departments can use to streamline their annual data collection and reporting practices. As a result, more than 100 departments have implemented TCJC’s standardized form, and in 2006 alone we had many calls from law enforcement thanking us for supplying a simple, easy to use format that clarifies the law’s reporting requirements. This has been a very gratifying part of our work.
Furthering Our Efforts
In 2007, the Texas Senate voted to create a statewide central repository for these data, a move TCJC strongly supports, but the bill finally fell to the clock on an unfinished House calendar. I couldn’t be prouder of the success we’ve had as Texas’ de facto repository of data, but a state data collection center would make the information more accurate and credible to stakeholders, creating even more opportunities for the community and police supervisors to use it to analyze and improve their practices.
Our efforts to assist agencies in understanding their data, streamlining their reporting practices, and improving the way they protect the public through the implementation of needed policy changes will continue, as will our provision of technical assistance to agencies regarding the requirements of the law. But only with the collaboration and input of community members, law enforcement, and key stakeholders can we bring about needed change in Texas.
Join us in our efforts to ensure the efficiency of police practices that increase public safety while simultaneously increasing the confidence of community members in law enforcement. To help us ensure effective police practices, contact Molly Totman at mtotman@criminaljusticecoalition.org.