Authorities dispute ACLU's claims of racial profiling

The St. Tammany Parish Sheriff’s Office “makes no apologies” for its arrest record of minorities despite a new American Civil Liberties Union study claiming it and three other local agencies use racial profiling.

“There is no racial profiling going on in St. Tammany Parish,” Maj. Fred Oswald said Thursday. “When somebody calls to report a crime, we don’t ask if they are black or white. We have no control over that. We target behavior on criminals, not color.”

The one-year study released this week found that minorities are 2.3 times more likely to be arrested than whites by the Sheriff’s Office, while in Covington and Slidell the rate is 1.8 times higher. In Mandeville the rate is 1.2 percent higher, according to the study.

“All three police departments and the Sheriff’s Office had arrest rates for people of color that were higher than people of color’s representation in the population,” according to the report. “Only Mandeville had a rate which suggests true balance.”

In Mandeville, where 10 percent of the city’s 12,255 citizens are black, 11 percent of those arrested were also black, according to the study.

In Covington, where 27 percent of the city’s 8,976 citizens are black, 41 percent make up the arrests.

In Slidell, where 22 percent of the population is black, 34 percent of those arrested were also black, according to the study.

And with 16 percent of its population being black, the Sheriff’s Office, which patrols unincorporated areas of the parish, boasts a 31 percent black arrest rate.

All rates are based on fourth quarter 2007 statistics.

“Racial profiling is wrong and is ineffective policing,” said Marjorie Esman, executive director of the ACLU of Louisiana. “Profiling diverts scarce resources away from the actual criminals by targeting people for no reason other than their appearance.”

Slidell police disagree.

“We take every step possible to prevent racial profiling,” Capt. Kevin Foltz said. “We’re not hiding anything here. It’s illegal and unethical, but the numbers are what they are.”

Oswald, with the Sheriff’s Office, offered a similar notion. He called for a more comprehensive study, one that looks at arrest reports for more than three months of the year to give a more accurate picture.

“It’s an indication of what’s happening with crime at the time,” he said. “The ACLU doesn’t want to know that.”

In fact, he offered conflicting statistics to back his theory. For example, while its jurisdiction is made up of 16 percent blacks, only 13 percent of drunk driving arrests were a minority for the fourth quarter of 2007. Meanwhile, blacks made up 70 percent of cocaine arrests for the same time.

“As a group there are just certain things we can’t control,” he said. “It’s not our fault these happen to be the numbers.”

Still, the ACLU’s report, which also claimed racial profiling exists in De Soto and Avoyelles parishes, calls for tighter restriction and legislative pushes to curb racial profiling throughout the state.

“Unfortunately, the report’s data from some of Louisiana’s law enforcement agencies mirrors data from police departments across the country that have been found to commit blatant racial profiling,” said King Downing, director of the national ACLU’s Campaign Against Racial Profiling. ”The challenge now is what will these agencies do?”