In New Jersey, the state recently reached an agreement with the federal government to ensure state troopers no longer pull cars over based solely on the color of someone's skin, known as racial profiling. It's come home to the suburbs as recent court cases against the Mount Prospect and Highland Park police departments raise the issue of how often police stop drivers just because they're black or Hispanic. And a pending lawsuit against the Batavia police department also alleges racial profiling. It's out there everywhere. It's difficult for officers to come forward because of their fear.
Police chiefs acknowledge it happens, but say it's only a tiny portion of police officers who do it.
Those officers, they say, must be disciplined or given sensitivity training when they make stops based on race. Enforcing the law based on skin color comes at a huge cost of alienating people in the community, Millner said. Born, who is white, recalled one Northwest suburban client, a black man in his early 20s, who was stopped more than 40 times in a year for no good reason as he drove his father's red Porsche to school. Earlier this week, a federal court judge asked the U.S. Justice Department to launch an investigation into whether Mount Prospect police target Hispanics and violate their civil rights. Some observers see the cases in Mount Prospect and Highland Park as a watershed because police officers broke the wall of silence to come forward and describe practices that have long been a custom in the suburbs.