Teach cops to see us as people, not types

• Reprints

Updated: July 18, 2011 2:10AM

Last week’s front page story, “Minorities more likely to get tickets,” surprised no one.

Everyone knows that regardless of where we were born or how much money or education we’ve amassed, minorities — with our dark skin, kinky hair or almond-shaped eyes — attract unwarranted suspicion while driving or attempting to board a plane.

In the latest annual review of 2.4 million traffic stops by almost all police departments, the Illinois Department of Transportation found that minority drivers were involved in traffic stops at higher rates than proportionate for their percentage of the state’s population. And black and Latino drivers were more likely to end up with a ticket and have their vehicle searched than their white counterparts.

Most vexing, minority drivers in Chicago were six times more likely than white drivers to be searched. And though the statewide rate was a mere twice as many searches for minorities as for whites, both statewide and in the city illegal contraband was more likely to be found in vehicles being driven by whites.

Read the Chicago Sun-Times website version of Art Golab’s story and you’ll find that some of our paper’s fine readers, commenting under the cloak of anonymity, think it’s necessary for police to single out minorities because they’re:

† More likely to drive illegally: “What the so-called statistics do not show is that the REASON minority drivers are searched is because they tend to have a larger % of drivers without drivers licenses and/or suspended/revoked drivers licenses, which is a jailable/arrestable [sic] offense.”

† Rude to law enforcement officials: “Working in customer service I noticed that afrocans [sic] and mexicans [sic] have an “attitude”, they like to demand more and certainly don’t know when to keep their mouth shut. They can be uppity and pushy and definately [sic] won’t follow simple requests (like wait or get in line, control your kid, answer the question I ask, . . .) They set themselves up with their attitude (and usually they are more likely to be wrong or pulling a fast one).”

† More likely to be dangerous criminals than whites: “The reason for this is obvious: minorities (read blacks and Hispanics) commit crimes at a much, much higher rate than whites. If the police weren’t stopping minorities at the rates they do, minority crime rates would be even higher.”

I point out these comments only because they are authentic opinions from real people — people who probably would tell you they are unbiased observers with no racial or ethnic antipathies.

Law enforcement officials are people too, people who do an extremely difficult job on a day-to-day basis with little fanfare, but we must expect more from them.

It is possible that every last one of the minority drivers to whom tickets were issued deserved them. But is it also possible that white drivers got off without a written citation more often than minority drivers just because whites are perceived as being less likely to commit crimes?

Based on the fact that more contraband was found in the cars of whites than of minorities, though whites were half as likely to be searched, I’d say yes.

Representatives of law enforcement agencies deserve our respect because they’re out doing the best they can to keep communities safe for everyone.

But if minorities in this state are to feel that they, too, are respected, officials across the state need to use this data to do some soul searching and commit to honest diversity training that respects real crime data even as it busts easy stereotypes about both whites and minorities.

All Illinois residents deserve to be protected by law enforcement officials who see them as individuals and not simply as types who are more or less likely to act in any particular way based solely on their race or ethnicity.