Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and welcome to all of our witnesses and those in the audience. Mr. Chairman, I want to sincerely thank you for holding this hearing. I know it is sometimes unusual around here for Democrats and Republicans to work together, but I am grateful for our collegial working relationship over the years and for the constructive efforts of you and your staff to bring us to this day.

I am pleased and not at all surprised to hear that you share my concern that racial profiling is an unacceptable law enforcement tool. At first glance, the changes you have outlined to S. 821, the Traffic Stops Statistic Study Act, appear reasonable and helpful. I am confident that we can work out the details quickly and once that is done, I look forward to welcoming you as a cosponsor to the bill. I believe your support is crucial to getting this bill through the Senate and enacted into law this year, and I am very pleased that you have been willing to roll up your sleeves and get this done. So I thank you. And, of course, I thank Representative John Conyers and Senator Frank Lautenberg, the principal authors of legislation to address the very real problem of racial profiling.

Mr. Chairman, our Nation has faced many difficult struggles involving issues of race, justice and equality. Fortunately, we have made great advances this century in ensuring that all Americans receive equal justice under the law. But we still face significant problems of racial injustice and discrimination. There are serious questions about whether African American and other minority juveniles receive prison sentences at a disproportionately higher rate than white juveniles. There are serious questions about whether African Americans and Hispanic Americans are subject to the death penalty disproportionately compared to whites. And for the millions of African Americans, Hispanic Americans and other Americans of racial or ethnic minority backgrounds who drive on our Nation’s streets and highways, there is the fear of being stopped for no apparent reason other than the color of their skin.

This law enforcement tool, known as racial profiling, targets drivers for heightened scrutiny or harassment because of the color of their skin, with an alleged traffic violation used as a pretext. Parodying the well-known acronym for drunk driving, “DWI,” racial profiling has been called “DWB,” or “Driving While Black” or “Driving While Brown.” I want to emphasize that I don’t believe all or even most law enforcement officers engage in this terrible practice. I believe that the vast majority of our men and women in blue are honorable people who fulfill their duties without engaging in racial profiling. But, as we will hear today, the experience of many African Americans and Hispanic Americans is very real. There is simply no doubt that some officers, unfortunately, do engage in this practice.

There are some, and I stress only some, law enforcement agencies or officers in our country who have decided that if you are African American or Latino, you are more likely to be trafficking drugs or engaged in other illegal activities than a white person, despite statistical evidence to the contrary. In a May 1999 report, the American Civil Liberties Union described a study that found that along I-95 in Maryland, while only roughly 17% of the total drivers and traffic violators are African American, an astonishing 73% of the drivers searched are African American. We’re going to hear more today about the scope of this problem, including from the principal author of the ACLU report, and, of course, the legislation Senator Lautenberg and I have sponsored will allow us to get an even better picture.

Mr. Chairman, whether in Maryland, Wisconsin or Missouri, all Americans must have the right to travel from place to place free of harassment, especially from their own government. No one in America should be considered suspicious – and have to live in fear of being pulled over, detained and searched – because of the color of his or her skin. As we will hear today, victims of racial profiling are forced to endure an incredibly humiliating experience – sometimes even a physically threatening one – on roadsides or in the backseat of police cruisers. Why? Because of the color of their skin. Not just African Americans and Latinos but all Americans should feel threatened when any one of us is denied our personal liberty in such an insidious and humiliating way. In twenty-first century America, racial profiling is not only indefensible, it is an affront to our Nation’s fundamental principles of justice, liberty and equality.

Mr. Chairman, this practice has another significant negative impact that I would like to touch on here – and that is the damage it does to the trust between law enforcement and the community and to our criminal justice system. Racial profiling leaves a scar not only on those Americans who are harassed but on relations between law enforcement and the community police officers have pledged to protect and serve. Where can African Americans and Latinos turn for help when they believe that the men and women in uniform cannot be trusted? As a Hispanic American testified recently in Glencoe, Illinois on his family’s experience with being profiled, “who is there left to protect us? The police just violated us.” This is profoundly disturbing to me and, I hope, to all Americans. Racial profiling chips away at the important trust that law enforcement agencies take great pains to develop with the community. And we have seen that when that trust is broken, it can lead to an escalation of tensions between the police and the community, as well as detrimental effects on our criminal justice system – like jury nullification and the failure to convict criminals because the community no longer believes the police officer on the witness stand. Racial profiling is clearly bad policing, and it has a ripple effect whose consequences we are only beginning to feel.

In just the last year since the Traffic Stops Statistics Study bill was introduced, we have already seen increased awareness of this problem in the law enforcement community, and an increased willingness to address it. As we will hear today, there are a growing number of police departments that have already begun collecting traffic stops data voluntarily. In fact, over 100 state and local police departments have now committed to compiling data. In addition, a number of states have passed or are considering legislation requiring their police departments to collect this data. These are very positive developments. These state and local efforts underscore the need for a federal role in collecting and analyzing traffic stops data to give Congress and the public a national picture of the extent of the racial profiling problem and lay the groundwork for national solutions to end this horrendous practice. Combating racial discrimination is one area where I believe a federal role is essential. We can applaud individual states and law enforcement agencies for taking action, but we cannot wait for this problem to be addressed comprehensively at the local level. Our citizens have a right to expect us to act.

I am pleased to have joined my distinguished colleague from New Jersey, Senator Lautenberg, in introducing S. 821, a companion bill to the bill introduced in the House by Representatives John Conyers and Robert Menendez. The bill would require the Attorney General to conduct an initial analysis of existing data on racial profiling and then design a study to gather data from a nationwide sampling of jurisdictions. This is a straightforward bill that only requires the Attorney General to conduct a study. Plain and simple. It doesn’t tell police officers how to do their jobs. And it doesn’t mandate data collection by police departments. The Attorney General’s sampling study would be based on data collected from police departments that voluntarily agree to participate in the Justice Department study.

President Clinton has endorsed S. 821, and last June he directed federal law enforcement agencies to begin collecting and reporting data on the race, ethnicity and gender of the people they stop and search at our Nation’s borders and airports. A coalition of civil rights and law enforcement organizations – like the ACLU, NAACP, the National Council of La Raza, and the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives – also support this legislation. I am pleased that Senators Torricelli and Kennedy have joined as cosponsors, and I am hopeful that more of our colleagues on the full Committee will agree to be cosponsors of this important initiative. The House of Representatives passed a similar bill in the 105th Congress, and just a few weeks ago, the House Judiciary Committee passed the bill without amendment. I hope that with your great help, Mr. Chairman, we can move this bill through the full Committee promptly.

Mr. Chairman, again, I thank you for holding this hearing. I’ve been told that this is the first hearing in Congress on the issue of racial profiling by state and local law enforcement, and I commend you for making it possible. I do care about this issue deeply and I think the Senate and the public will benefit from the light we are shining on this problem today. Thank you.