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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (April 6, 2001)
Walker proposes state bill targeting racial profiling ■ If passed, House Bill 2441 will help ensure that Oregon law enforcement agencies do not target minority groups By Kendall Larsen Oregon Daily Emerald Over the past few years, deter mined students, parents and commu nity leaders all over Oregon have been rallying for legislative recognition for the issue of racial profiling. With Ore gon House Bill 2441, they may get it. On March 30, the House Judiciary Committee heard a proposed bill by state Rep. Vicki Walker, D-Eugene, to aid law enforcement agencies’ partici pation in data collection and analysis. The bill is an expanded version of HB 2433, which was passed in 1997. “This builds upon that work that was started in 1997,” Walker said. “But it gives law enforcement some direction for where to go and how to accomplish what we want them to ac complish; to make sure that law en forcement agencies do not engage in a practice of discrimination based on race, color or national origin. ” Bola Majekobaje, a working advo cate for the Multicultural Center, said nearly all her friends have been target ed by police officers for no reason oth er than the color of their skin. These instances range in severity from being pulled over to being sprayed with mace. Majekobaje said students can help stop the occurrences of racial profiling. “If we tell our law enforcement that we know that racial profiling is wrong, and if we can tell our represen tatives and senators that it’s wrong, then we do have a voice,” she said. HB 2433 made changes to Oregon’s stop and search laws, giving more au thority to police officers in making traffic stops and conducting weapon searches. A part of the bill addressed data collection by law enforcement agencies for the purposes of ensuring that no community’s police force specifically targets members of mi nority groups. Walker’s introduction to the issue of racial profiling came when a con stituent brought her attention to the lack of funding for helping law en forcement agencies conduct data col lection. She then met with the Nation al Association for the Advancement of Colored People and became aware of the many Oregonians who believe that racial profiling is a serious and prominent issue. “We originally were going to man date that every law enforcement agency in the state of Oregon do data collection,” Walker said. “But that just became an impossible task, because the citizens of Oregon passed a law that says the Legislature cannot im pose an un-funded mandate on local communities.” Instead of spending precious mon ey on mandating data collection, the facilitators of the new bill are calling for the creation of a Law Enforcement 515 High St Eugene 485-4224 Compact Fluorescents special SPRING Savings on selected Energy Star® approved lamps turn on your lights, longer, for less! 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The work group has aldo tried to ensure the data collected is propor tional to the actual percentage of mi nority groups in each cortimunity. This is tricky, Rae said, because tjhe demographics of minorities in a cer tain area may not represent the driv ing population of that community. Rae added that even if racial profil ing is not a common practice within Oregon law enforcement, the bill will help to strengthen the trust relation ship between police officers and their communities. “Law enforcement agencies do not fear data collection,” Walker said of the support she has received from agencies around the state. The bill would allow each community the flexibility to de velop its own system without a great deal of legislative control. Some students at the University have shared personal experiences they have had with racial profiling. Walker said she was impressed with the students speaking their minds, which she believes is important when dealing with legislators. 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