Racial Profiling

Earlier today, the ACLU of Washington joined a number of allies in the immigrant rights community, including El Comite Pro-Reforma Migratoria and CASA Latina, at a press conference in opposition to the ever-expanding Secure Communities (S Comm) program. The press conference was a response to the federal government's move last week, with very little fanfare or publicity, to activate the program for all counties in Washington. Here's why that's bad news for every community in Washington.

An important statewide Latino organization in Washington State has weighed in against gang injunction legislation in the state legislature. Here's what Latino Civic Alliance has to say.

I returned, very happily, from the Department of Justice press conference this morning. The DOJ’s in-depth report confirms what the ACLU has been saying and what many people of color and others have experienced – that the Seattle Police Department has engaged in a pattern and practice of excessive use of force.

Racial discrimination in housing has been illegal in the United States for over 40 years. The Fair Housing Act of 1968 makes it a crime to discriminate on the basis of race, color, or national origin in all housing-related transactions.  But a recent study conducted by the Seattle Office of Civil Rights demonstrates that housing discrimination is far from dead.

On October 22, the Minority Executive Directors Coalition (MEDC) of King County presented the ACLU-WA its Founders Award for our work calling for a Department of Justice investigation of the Seattle Police Department and advocating for communities of color.

Check out the fresh-on-the-newsstand print version of the Seattle Weekly for the article about the mayor of Mt. Vernon’s anti-Spanish bias – but with the more pungent headline “Como se dice ‘bullshit’?”  And props to the Skagit Valley Herald – a great exemplar of local journalism – for breaking the story and following up on its reverberations in the community.

On the heels of Seattle Weekly reporter Nina Shapiro’s in-depth examination of the Border Patrol’s aggressive tactics on the Olympic Peninsula (“Twilight for Immigrants”) comes a revelation that sheds light on the troubling situation. In a follow-up story, Shapiro reports about a Border Patrol whistleblower who has come forward to assert that BP agents don’t have meaningful work to do far from our northern border. 

Last May we were stunned to see video of a Seattle police officer yelling racial slurs at a Latino man lying prone on the ground and kicking him in the head while another officer stomped on his legs.  This incident was one of many that led the ACLU and 34 other organizations to ask the Department of Justice to investigate the Seattle Police Department for racially biased policing. 

Several years ago, comedian Chris Rock created a “public service announcement” called “How Not to Get Your Ass Kicked by the Police.”  The message includes obvious directions like “obey the law” and as well as tongue-in-cheek suggestions like “if you have to give a friend a ride, get a white friend” and satire about police reactions. This piece is funny because it is based on a simple truth known throughout communities of color:  If you are a black or brown man, you don’t have to work very hard to attract the attention of the police.