EthnicMajority

(Atlanta Journal Constitution) The U.S. Justice Department launched a civil rights investigation Thursday into whether Miami police officers engaged in a pattern of excessive use of deadly force in the fatal shootings of seven African-American suspects over an eight-month span.

Thomas Perez, assistant attorney general for civil rights, and Miami U.S. Attorney Wifredo Ferrer said the probe will focus not on the individual officers but on whether the Miami Police Department's policies and practices on use of force led to violations of constitutional rights. The investigation is not criminal in nature.

"We're looking at systems. We're not looking at individual culpability," Perez told reporters. "We will follow the facts where the facts lead us. We will peel the onion to its core."

The shootings in inner-city Miami, from July 2010 to February 2011 and including two others that were not fatal, sparked outrage in the African-American community and led to protests at City Hall. The NAACP and American Civil Liberties Union, among others, demanded a federal investigation.

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(FoxNews Latino) The American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California is suing a school district and law enforcement authorities for allegedly racially profiling 55 Hispanic students.

The ACLU says Glendale Unified School District illegally detained and searched the students, who were rounded up and help for an hour in September 2010. The Los Angeles police departments and Los Angeles County Probation Department were also named in the lawsuit.

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(Sacramento Bee) Eight years ago, Illinois began requiring police departments, including the state police force, to keep track of traffic stops to see whether their officers practiced racial profiling – stopping black or Hispanic motorists more often than whites because of their skin color.

Now, a civil rights group wants a federal investigation of the Illinois state police based largely on the data collected under the law, which was sponsored by Barack Obama when he was a state senator.

After examining the data, the Illinois chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union says state troopers ask to search the cars of black and Hispanic drivers more often than those of white drivers, in cases where police have no legal grounds to search the cars on their own without the driver's consent. But state police are more than 2.5 times as likely to find illegal items (such as alcohol, drugs or stolen property) when searching the vehicles of whites compared to those of Hispanics. Alcohol is the most common item police find among all groups, the ACLU claims, but whites are the most likely to have drugs and drug paraphernalia.

The complaint is not focused on specific allegations of prejudiced behavior. What it alleges is that state officials hardly look at racial profiling information at all. The law requiring the collection of traffic stop data created a panel to review the results, but the slots were never filled and the group never met. "Nobody does anything with the data," says Harry Grossman of the Illinois ACLU. "We are the only ones that have done anything."

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(Chicago Sun Times) Black and Latino drivers pulled over in Illinois traffic stops last year were more likely to end up with a ticket and have their vehicle searched than their white counterparts, according to a new Transportation Department study.

Minority drivers also were involved in traffic stops at a higher rate than their share of the state population would suggest, even though illegal contraband was more likely to be found in vehicles being driven by whites.

The average length of a traffic stop was the same for all races: 10 minutes.

The American Civil Liberties Union said Wednesday that the study supports its request for a federal civil rights investigation of the way Illinois State Police handles driver searches. It also called on state leaders to address the issue in all police departments.

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(Reuters) Racial slurs and a noose strung up outside his barracks were among the alleged harassment an African American war veteran said he was subjected to while serving in Afghanistan, according to a complaint filed this week.

Specialist Adam Jarrell, the only African American in a unit of 216 soldiers of the New Mexico Army National Guard, told Reuters on Tuesday that his complaints to superiors were not only ignored, but resulted in increased harassment.

“It’s dangerous when the only people you can count on are the people hanging nooses outside your room, telling you they hate you because you’re black,” said Jarrell, 23, a Sheriff’s deputy in Hobbs, New Mexico, who has been with the National Guard since 2006. He arrived home in New Mexico a year ago.

The American Civil Liberties Union of New Mexico filed the racial discrimination complaint with the federal Office for Civil Rights at the Department of Justice asking for an investigation.

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(UPI) Civil liberties groups have mounted a passionate constitutional attack against Arizona’s tough new illegal immigrant law, saying its “sweeping requirements” violate the U.S. and state constitutions and will lead to racial profiling.

A complaint filed in federal court in Phoenix last week raises the specter of a Hispanic-American, or any other ethnic American, having to carry a passport to prove U.S. citizenship to avoid detention.

Feelings run just as high on the other side. Proponents of the law say illegal immigration costs Arizona about $2.7 billion a year in education and police operations — read Hispanic gangs — among other things.

Rassmussen Reports says a national telephone survey of 1,000 likely voters, conducted April 22-23, found 60 percent of voters nationwide support the law while 31 percent oppose it. Still, 58 percent said they believe implementing the law will result in civil rights violations for some people. The margin of error was 3 percentage points.

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