Missouri Bill To Ban Racial Profiling Draws Attention For Including Gays

Legislation Inspired By Michael Brown’s Murder Covers Race, Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity

Two African-American Democrats in Missouri, ground zero for the #BlackLivesMatter movement in the wake of Michael Brown’s 2014 murder at the hands of Ferguson Officer Darren Wilson, have introduced a bill that would ban police profiling of racial and other minorities, including gays. 

The bill would require Missouri law enforcement officers to report the “perceived race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, disability, English language proficiency or national origin” of motorists and pedestrians who are stopped by police. Agencies would then report the data to the state, and if it were to show a pattern of police profiling, they could be subject to increased officer training requirements, funding cuts and even de-certification. 

In addition to anecdotal evidence such as Brown’s shooting, existing data in Missouri shows that a ban on racial profiling by police is sorely needed. Missouri already requires law enforcement officers to report the ethnicity of those who are stopped, and in 2014, blacks were 75 percent more likely to be pulled over than whites, according to The St. Louis Post Dispatch. 

“Blacks and Hispanics also were more likely to be searched as a result of those stops — even though white drivers were more likely to be in possession of drugs, weapons or other illegal contraband,” the newspaper reports. 

Unfortunately, a column in the Post Dispatch misrepresents the new bill, known as the Fair and Impartial Policing Act, by referring to it in a headline as a “driving while gay” measure and questioning the rationale of requiring police to record characteristics that aren’t readily discernible. Not surprisingly, commenters expressed outrage about the proposal, even calling one of the bill’s authors, state Sen. Jamilah Nasheed, a “communist.” 

To be clear, though, the bill would prohibit law enforcement officers from asking drivers, passengers and pedestrians for anything other than ID, motor vehicle registration, name and address. In addition, the identities of those who are stopped and the officers who stopped them would remain private.

Moreover, numerous studies have shown that LGBT people, just like other minorities, routinely are victims of police profiling — especially transgender and gender-nonconforming people, queer people of color, and homeless youth.

In a 2015 paper titled “Discrimination and Harassment by Law Enforcement Officers in the LGBT Community,” researchers at UCLA’s Williams Institute wrote:

“A 2014 report on a national survey of 2,376 LGBT people and people living with HIV found that 73% of respondents had face-to-face contact with the police in the past five years. Of those respondents, 21% reported encountering hostile attitudes from officers, 14% reported verbal assault by the police, 3% reported sexual harassment and 2% reported physical assault at the hands of law enforcement officers.” 

In December 2014, in response to controversies nationwide over fatal police shootings, the U.S. Department of Justice released guidance prohibiting federal law enforcement officers from profiling based on race and other factors, including sexual orientation and gender identity. At the time, the National Center for Transgender Equality said the DOJ guidance didn’t go far enough because it exempted TSA and border security agents, as well as certain anti-terror investigators, in addition to state and local law enforcement officers:

“At a time when many communities are reeling from violence at the hands of police misconduct, our nation’s commitment to equality must be firm and without exception,” NCET Executive Director Mara Keisling said. “Whether ‘driving while Black,’ ‘flying while Muslim,’ ‘walking while Latino,’ or ‘walking while trans,’ it is always and everywhere wrong.” 

(Notably, the Missouri bill includes sexual orientation and gender, but not “gender identity,” in its definition of “biased policing.” However, it includes “gender identity” in describing a violation of the statute.)

In March 2015, President Barack Obama’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing released recommendations mostly focusing on racial profiling, but also addressing LGBT issues. The recommendations included legislation similar to the new Missouri bill, as well as establishing search and seizure procedures “that cease using the possession of condoms as the sole evidence of intent to engage in prostitution-related offenses.” 

Also last year, Democratic Congressmen Ben Cardin and John Conyers reintroduced the End Racial Profiling Act (ERPA), which also includes sexual orientation and gender identity. The bill currently has only 99 co-sponsors:

“From Stonewall to stop-and-frisk, LGBTQ people … have long been targets of profiling and other forms of discriminatory policing,” Lambda Legal wrote in support of the bill. “The consequences have ranged from deportation to death, arrest to assault, homophobic harassment to humiliation.” 

Maryland — site of widespread protests over the 2015 death of Freddie Gray by Baltimore police — recently became the first state to enact a ban on police profiling of minorities, including LGBT people, and it seems likely that other progressive states will soon follow suit.

Let’s just hope debates about these critical measures aren’t reduced to “driving while gay.”

 

This article has been updated. 

Image by N!(K — loveforphotography – via Flickr and a CC license