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| NEWS > 09 December 2005 |
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State Attorney unveils unit to
The Cook County state's attorney's office announced Thursday that it had established a special unit to review police shootings and other allegations of excessive force by officers, hoping to plug gaps in how prosecutors uncover and evaluate misconduct by police.
Acknowledging his office had missed evidence of wrongdoing turned up in easily obtainable sources such as lawsuits, State's Atty. Richard Devine said that the new unit would examine those civil suits and other sources for potential evidence of wrongdoing.
The announcement comes in the wake of a Tribune investigati... Read more
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HoumaToday.com - LA, USA
09 December 2005
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Police union argues against ID
BOSTON - The Boston police union went to the state's highest court on Friday to try to block a requirement that officers identify themselves on traffic stop forms aimed at preventing racial profiling.
Bryan Decker, a lawyer for the Boston Police Patrolmen's Union, told the Supreme Judicial Court that a provision in a 2000 state law says data gathered in an effort to combat racial profiling may not contain information that would reveal the identity of police officers. The union fears individual officers could be sued for discrimination or penalized unfairly.
Lawyers for the Police Department and state Public Safety Secretary Edward Flynn argued that the law is poorly written and was not intended to keep identifying information for police officers off the traffic stop forms. They said police chiefs need the names of the officers to combat racial profiling.
Boston police Commissioner Kathleen O'Toole had ordered all police officers to write their identification numbers on the forms, along with the driver's race and an explanation of the stop. But O'Toole agreed to delay the requirement until after the court has ruled.
Decker said the union's lawsuit was not aimed at derailing efforts to stop racial profiling, but only to protect the identity of police officers who could be unfairly disciplined by the department for making traffic stops as part of their duties.
"The Boston Police Patrolmen's Association doesn't support or condone racial profiling," Decker said.
Susan M. Prosnitz, representing the state's Executive Office of Public Safety, said the language in one section of the 2000 law is confusing, but the intent of the law was clearly to combat racial profiling.
"The only way to get to that is to have officer identification," Prosnitz said.
After the anti-racial profiling law was passed by the state Legislature in 2000, data from 1.6 million traffic citations issued by police departments across the state was analyzed. The analysis found that in about 75 percent of the 341 police departments - including the Boston Police Department - the percentage of traffic citations issued to minorities was disproportionately high.
The second phase of the law required those police departments to collect additional data, not just on traffic citations but every time a motorist is stopped. The form includes a place for the police officer to write his identification number.
The SJC did not indicate when it would issue its ruling.
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