Activists: Racial profiling used in Asheville-area police checkpoints
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ASHEVILLE — Warming weather has signaled the start of the “checkpoints season,” a months-long period where local law enforcement will set up sobriety, seat belt and license checkpoints throughout Western North Carolina.
One group of activists has noticed a pattern in this that disproportionately affects minorities, specifically Latinos.
With racial profiling, there is a presumption by law enforcement that because a person is of a certain race, that individual is more likely to be engaging in illegal behavior, racial justice fellow Raul Pinto said Sunday during the annual meeting of the WNC chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union of North Carolina.
He was the featured speaker at the event, which drew an audience of about 50 to the community room of Congregation Beth HaTephila.
“We find that is the case here,” Pinto said. “Police officers and local law enforcement agencies are making the assumption that just because you are Latino, you are more than likely to be undocumented.”
Sunday’s discussion included strategies used by the ACLU and its partners to combat racial profiling.
Checkpoints, Pinto said, are more likely to be set up in economically challenged neighborhoods where a majority of the residents are Latino. Through interviews, reported and anecdotal incidents, and with the help of experts, the ACLU has been able to conclude that the motivation of law enforcement appears to be financial rather than racial, contrary to popular belief.
Every time a person is ticketed for not having a license, it costs about $185, Pinto said.
“A lot of these folks, first off, are low-income,” he said. “They don’t make a lot of money and so most of their income is going to go to pay these tickets. We have heard reports that people have been stopped twice in one week because the checkpoints are basically outside their doors.”
The practice may raise revenues for the agencies, but it hurts the relationship between the Latino community and the police, Pinto said.
This relationship was strained recently by the arrest of Antonio Hernandez Carranza. He had cocaine charges filed against him after a field test incorrectly showed traces of the drug in the tortilla dough, cheese and other food he was transporting.Page 2 of 2)
“I think that the way that you have seen, specifically with checkpoints, is that it creates this mistrust between the community and the local law enforcement agencies,” Pinto said. “It could play in the mind of the community where an incident like this could be racially motivated.”
In the audience was City Councilman Cecil Bothwell, who is launching a bid for U.S. House of Representatives. Bothwell, who was representing a coalition of faith-based groups, recently met with Asheville Police Department officials to talk to them about the use of the checkpoints, among other things.
“They (police officials) said the checkpoints, sometimes they get backed up and sometimes they just let a bunch of cars through,” Bothwell said. “But it seems like a real easy way to skip a bunch of Caucasians without counting … They claim that they don’t position them by ethnic neighborhoods but by high-crime neighborhoods, and that’s a real tough distinction to make.”
The ACLU-NC has been looking at different avenues to relieve the burden on the Latino community, including litigation.
But it faces challenges specially if the individuals are undocumented and are wary of identifying themselves as such in court.
Groups like Defensa Comunitaria, with Nuestro Centro, have volunteers that operate a hot line that both document locations and monitor police as they operate the checkpoints to keep protest the practice and to protect the individuals affected.
“It goes beyond tickets, it goes to breaking up families,” said Angelica Reza Wind. “Just recently this family was going out for a Sunday afternoon picnic. The father went to get sandwiches, and he got pulled over because he didn’t have his turn signal on. I do that all the time and so this family who was just going to go on a picnic got to see (the) father detained and subsequently deported.”
