[Congressional Record Volume 146, Number 110 (Monday, September 18, 2000)]
[House]
[Pages H7696-H7697]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                   RACIAL PROFILING IN MODERN AMERICA

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Hulshof). Under a previous order of the 
House, the gentlewoman from the District of Columbia (Ms. Norton) is 
recognized for 5 minutes.
  Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, the Congressional Black Caucus held its 
annual meeting and events this past week. I rise this evening to speak 
about an issue that has unusual resonance, as one can see everywhere 
one goes where there are significant numbers of African Americans.
  Vice President Gore spoke at Howard University and again Saturday 
evening to the Congressional Black Caucus dinner participants. At both 
places he briefly mentioned racial profiling. No issue, animated the 
mostly African American audience more than the mention of racial 
profiling. At Howard University, the Vice President had a moment of 
silence for Prince Jones, a student at Howard University who was 
followed by police from Maryland into Virginia, apparently stopped; he 
backed his car into the police car and was shot many times in the back.
  The Vice President was careful to say that it was a case still under 
investigation; none of us had any way to know whether there was 
provocation for this. The students, of course, were up in arms that 
this model student at Howard University, a young man whose reputation 
was impeccable, was shot down this way.
  The point I want to make here is not that the police were wrong, but 
that we have come to a point in the African American community where 
racial profiling is so widespread that nobody believes that anyone who 
was shot was doing anything, because there have been so many instances 
of black people in every class of every kind and of every profession 
being followed simply because they were black.
  Mr. Speaker, what this amounts to is a loss of confidence in a vital 
part of the criminal justice system, and this at a time when African 
Americans have embraced the police because of crime rates in the 
African American community.
  But look at what they see. Wholesale of police brutality incidents 
reported. Sentencing rules for small time drug offenses with a 
disproportionate racial impact so severe that in the Federal system, 
sentencing guidelines have been repudiated by much of the Federal 
judiciary. The use of the death penalty, whose racial consequences have 
shaken the American public, led to a moratorium in some of the States; 
and now we have the Justice Department reporting that even in the 
Federal system on death row, there are disproportionate numbers of 
African Americans.
  Mr. Speaker, nobody wants to see the criminal justice system held up 
to anything but the highest praise from us all, particularly at a time 
when our crime rates, though going down; there was a 10 percent 
reduction in crime in this country since last year, are still far too 
high and the highest in the western world. But if we wanted to begin 
somewhere to restore confidence in the criminal justice system, surely 
we would begin with the notion that when a black person goes out on the 
street and walks down the street, there ought to be more than that to 
have him picked up or followed. That is what we have come to. There has 
been so much concern about the way crime escalated in the early 1990s, 
that though we have brought it down, we have this terrible residue.
  We recognize that there are disproportionate numbers of African 
Americans who, in fact, have been picked up and put in jail. All the 
more reason to be careful about branding folks who have abided by the 
rules and done what they should do. Imagine how mothers of young 
African Americans in their 20s, I am one who has a son, finished 
college in 4 years, now works at ABC Sports, is doing what he is 
supposed to do, I do not know in New York City where he works, when he 
will get stopped, because, in fact, the stops there and elsewhere have 
been so frequent.
  Frankly, I love the cops. I love the Capitol Police, I love the D.C. 
police

[[Page H7697]]

and I do not know what I would do without them; I am struggling to get 
more of them on the streets. We have coordinated police so that Federal 
police and D.C. police work together. I think it is most unfair that we 
have not found a way to go at this so that we can restore confidence in 
the police, not lose that confidence right when we need to all gather 
in a circle around the police, thank them for what they do and ask them 
to do more of what they do. They put their lives on the line.
  Mr. Speaker, States and cities need to do more to arrest racial 
profiling and police brutality. In the next session of Congress we need 
bills to help the States and cities do more. I promise to be a part of 
that effort.

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