U.S. Law Enforcement Coming Under Fire For Racial Profiling
ANDRIA HALL, CNN ANCHOR: The battle for racial equality still isn't over. CNN justice correspondent Pierre Thomas looks at what some people call one of the most subtle examples of racism.</s>PIERRE THOMAS, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Ron Sullivan, Robert Wilkins, clean cut, professionals, Harvard-trained attorneys who work as public defenders in Washington and, they say, victims of police racial profiling. Wilkins and relatives forced to submit to a search by a drug sniffing dog during a routine traffic stop in Maryland in 1992.</s>ROBERT WILKINS, PUBLIC DEFENDER: It was very humiliating because we had to stand outside alongside the car in the rain as people drove past and this German shepard was jumping on top of the rental car.</s>THOMAS: No drugs were found. Wilkins successfully sued. Sullivan says he was stopped while a law student at Harvard in the early 1990s, accused of being a robbery suspect. He says police have stopped him dozens of times.</s>RON SULLIVAN, PUBLIC DEFENDER: You feel frustrated, you feel annoyed, and you feel angry.</s>THOMAS: Sullivan and Wilkins are part of a growing chorus of voices who claim police unfairly target minorities based on race.</s>HUGH PRICE, PRES., NATIONAL URBAN LEAGUE: It shows that Jim Crow is still alive and well in the criminal justice system and we have to continue to root it out.</s>THOMAS: Law enforcement agencies across the country, including the New Jersey State Police, have come under fire over questions about traffic stops. (on camera): Yet there is no comprehensive study on the scope of the problem and some police say the issue has been overblown.</s>LOU CANNON, D.C. FRATERNAL ORDER OF POLICE: Is it a problem? Yes, but it is a very minute problem. If you look at the hundreds of thousands of traffic stops that occur on a daily basis, the amount that are actually perceived to be racially profiled are very, very small.</s>THOMAS (voice-over): Thirty-five years after the height of the civil rights movement, the issue of race and policing remains volatile, as current as the Amadou Diallo shooting. Some police say addressing questions about profiling requires bridging a perception gap.</s>EDWARD FLYNN, CHIEF OF POLICE, ARLINGTON COUNTY, VA.: The question is, what conducts are we most concerned about and how can we regain the community's trust in those areas in which trust in the police has been undermined?</s>THOMAS: Robert Wilkins says, for minorities, the message from unwarranted stops is clear.</s>WILKINS: They are less worthy of respect, they are less worthy of any benefit of the doubt, they are less worthy of trust.</s>THOMAS: Pierre Thomas, CNN, Washington.