The Trucker Newspaper - December 15-31, 2015

Thetrucker.com
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
AUSTIN, Texas — Texas state troopers
habitually misidentify Hispanics as white in
traffic records, calling into question the accuracy
of state data used to monitor racial profiling,
according to a television news report.
KXAN-TV in Austin conducted a database
review using millions of records extending
back to 2010 that shows troopers across the
state inaccurately reported the race of Hispanic
drivers.
A state law meant to prevent racial profiling
requires authorities to document the race
of every driver who is issued a warning or citation,
or is arrested.
The television station’s investigation of
Department of Public Safety (DPS) traffic
citation records also found the number of
drivers stopped by troopers and recorded as
Hispanic has gone up annually since 2010
— from nearly 208,000 to 351,000 last year
— while the number of drivers recorded as
white declined in the same time period from
1.9 million to about 1.2 million last year.
Among the most common surnames of
drivers listed by troopers as white are Garcia,
Martinez, Hernandez, Gonzalez and Rodriguez.
While a Hispanic name doesn’t necessarily
mean a person is of Hispanic descent,
the review of DPS records shows more than
Nation December 15-31, 2015 • 19
Texas police misidentifying Hispanics
as whites in traffic records, TV says
1.9 million drivers with traditionally Hispanic
names were listed as white. Over the same period,
approximately 1.6 million were reported
as Hispanic.
Sergio Raul Mejia received a traffic citation
in Georgetown last May for having his
license plate on the dash of his truck. The
trooper noted Mejia’s race as white on the
ticket.
“That’s bad,” Mejia said. “I’m Hispanic.
He was not supposed to put white people.”
DPS spokesman Tom Vinger acknowledged
that law enforcement databases at the
state and national levels have limitations with
identifying codes that are used. For instance,
their computer systems have five specific
codes for race, but that Hispanic is seen as an
ethnicity, rather than a race.
Ranjana Natarajan, director of the Civil
Rights Clinic at the University of Texas
School of Law, says the findings reveal that
DPS’ racial statistics likely are inaccurate.
“It shows that there either seems to be a
complete lack of training on the part of DPS
officers and other law enforcement officers
about how to report people’s race or there is
deliberate, sort of trying to not follow the policy
if they have been trained properly on how
to report the race of the drivers whom they
stop,” Natarajan said. 8