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Obama administration unveils federal law enforcement profiling ban
Holder, who has made the release of the guidelines a priority before leaving the Justice Department next year, called the guidelines a “major and important step forward to ensure effective policing” by federal law enforcement.
The guidelines extend a ban on routine racial profiling that the Justice Department announced in 2003 under then-Attorney General John Ashcroft. Civil rights groups have long said those rules left open too many loopholes by allowing an exemption for national security and border investigations and by failing to extend the ban to characteristics beyond race and ethnicity.
The new guidelines would end the carve-out on national security and border investigations and widen the profiling ban to prohibit the practice on the basis of religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation and gender identity — though agents would still be able to consider those factors if they had information linking a person of that characteristic to a specific crime or threat.
Still, the new protocols allow for significant exemptions, including some for Homeland Security officials who screen passengers at airports and do inspections at the border. Homeland Security officials argued for the exemptions on the basis of what they said was “the unique nature of border and transportation security as compared to traditional law enforcement.”
“This does not mean that officers and agents are free to profile,” the department said in a statement. “To the contrary, DHS’ existing policies make it categorically clear that profiling is prohibited,” while allowing for limited circumstances in which race, ethnicity and other characteristics could be considered.
The American Civil Liberties Union objected to those exemptions.
“It is so loosely drafted that its exceptions risk swallowing any rule and permit some of the worst law enforcement policies and practices that have victimized and alienated American Muslim and other minority communities,” said Laura W. Murphy, director of the ACLU’s Washington Legislative Office. “This guidance is not an adequate response to the crisis of racial profiling in America.”
The department said other activities, such as civil immigration enforcement and Coast Guard law enforcement actions, would still be covered.
Source: Associated Press
