[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 146 (2000), Part 12]
[House]
[Page 17836]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                 RACIAL PROFILING AND POLICE BRUTALITY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. 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, there is an issue of great potency brewing 
in the African American community such that I feel compelled to bring 
it to the attention of this body.
  Like other Americans, African Americans are animated by the same 
issues. Education is at the top of the list. And of course, there is a 
Patients' Bill of Rights and preserving Social Security and Medicare.
  But what amazes me from the data and, anecdotally, when looking at 
black publications in my own district, is a surprising issue that has 
greater interest and intensity than others; and that issue is racial 
profiling and police brutality.
  This is most interesting because the African American community has 
embraced police because there was such high crime, especially in the 
early 1990's. Crime is down 10 percent now from last year, 34 percent 
over the last few years; and yet there is this intense hostility based 
on what is happening particularly to black men but also to black women.
  If one has raised a boy the way that I have so that he gets to go to 
college, graduates in 4 years, has a good job, it does not make a 
dime's worth of difference if he is driving down a road and there is a 
sense that who he ought to pull over are black people rather than 
others.
  So that, if we look at Interstate 95, where 17 percent of the drivers 
are African-Americans, 56 percent of those searched are black; or let 
us look at California in a 1997 study that showed that only 2 percent 
of 3,400 drivers stopped yielded contraband; or a recent study of 
racial profiling on I-95 here in the East, about 17 percent of those 
who drive along I-95 are African Americans but they represented 60 
percent of the drivers searched in 1999.
  Something is wrong with those figures. And it has now penetrated deep 
in the African American community and it knows no class bounds. The 
richest and most middle-class African Americans know that there is no 
difference to a police officer who is looking for black people between 
a youngster that has done all he should do and somebody who may, in 
fact, be carrying drugs.
  What amounts to a loss in the criminal justice system has occurred 
throughout the African American community where so many young African 
American men are caught up in the first place. We need to have that 
community where we had it when they began to embrace police in the 
1980s, and we are losing them.
  This body apparently had some recognition because under the present 
majority, H.R. 1443, which was a bill sponsored by the gentleman from 
Michigan (Mr. Conyers) was indeed passed in 1998, which allows the 
collection of certain kinds of information about traffic stops. This 
body passed it. It was sent to the Senate. The Senate Committee on the 
Judiciary never acted on it.
  We need to pass this bill again. It is now called H.R. 118. We need 
to pass it. Because about the worst thing that can happen in our 
society is that people believe that criminal justice does not have 
justice. And it is very hard for me to believe that there is justice in 
the system when the disparities are as huge as this.

                              {time}  1700

  Obviously, most African Americans play by the rules. So when you do 
not know whether playing by the rules will get you pulled over or not, 
particularly if you are a young black man, the stereotypic person to 
pull over, the rage of a loss of confidence that you are operating in a 
fair system becomes very great.
  This is an issue for us all. This is an issue we can eliminate simply 
by first studying it and coming to understand what its causes are. H.R. 
118 does not ask this body to take specific steps now. We need to know 
what is happening and why it is happening. If, in fact, black Americans 
see that we do not care enough even to find out why these disparities 
exist, I think we are sending a horrific message, especially now as 
people get ready to go to the polls. They want to see whether or not 
something can be done. I am not asking that something be done during 
this session. I do believe that during this session we have to start 
the ball rolling so that we can know what, if anything, we can do about 
these very telling statistics.

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