RACIAL PROFILING Officials charting response to discrimination BY STEVEN STYCOS

As Rhode Island police chiefs and civil rights advocates respond to a statewide finding that police stop minority motorists more often than whites, the Rhode Island State Police have verbally counseled a trooper accused of making a racially motivated traffic stop.

State trooper Michael Gill was counseled for "unprofessional" conduct during a Traffic Tribunal hearing, says Major John Leyden, spokesman for the state police. In December, Gill gave Monica Marshall of Providence a ticket because, he said, her 10-year-old grandson was standing in her moving van. Marshall, however, says the child was seated and wearing a seat belt. The real reason she was stopped, she says, is because she is black.

During a February hearing, Marshall cited God as her witness and accused Gill of lying about the incident. Gill responded by telling Magistrate Aurdendina Gonsalves Veiga, "I suggest you and God respond to Lincoln police barracks and I’ll show you the video tape [of the traffic stop]." At a subsequent hearing, however, Gill was unable to produce a tape. Nevertheless, Veiga found Marshall guilty.

Marshall appealed and lost. Then she paid the $50 fine, plus $25 in court costs, rather than having her license suspended.

Leyden says Gill was counseled specifically about his tape-recorded remark to Veiga. The video of the stop was unavailable, he adds, because Gill was using a borrowed cruiser that day.

In July, a statewide survey of traffic stops indicated that police in almost every Rhode Island community are more likely to stop minority motorists than white drivers, and more likely to search a their vehicles. Since then, a Rhode Island Police Chiefs’ Association sub-committee has grappled with the issue, says state police Superintendent Steven Pare, and decided that the Rhode Island Select Commission on Race and Police-Community Relations can best coordinate solutions. Established by then-Governor Lincoln Almond after the fatal 2000 shooting of Providence police officer Cornel Young Jr., the commission was recently made permanent by the state legislature.

The commission is developing training procedures to eliminate racial bias in policing and devising regular data collection methods to help supervisors prevent racial profiling, says executive director Lloyd Monroe. This week, the group will also announce the results of a successful campaign to recruit minority state police cadets, Monroe says.

He warns, however, that effective solutions will take time. "We don’t think there’s going to be short quick fixes," Monroe says.

Meanwhile, racial profiling information from Rhode Island’s largest police force is still being analyzed. Providence police complied with the state law requiring a seven-month survey of race and traffic stops only after the American Civil Liberties Union’s (ACLU) Rhode Island chapter won a suit forcing the department to obey the law. In January, shortly after the election of Mayor David N. Cicilline, Providence police started collecting comprehensive data, reports ACLU executive director Steven Brown. A team of professors from Northeastern University is analyzing the results.

Civil rights activists plan to hold community meetings around the state this fall, according to Brown, to develop responses to the driving while black study results.