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POWs Waiting for Apologies (in National News) API Advisory Commission Visits S.F. (in Bay Area News) Asian Food Markets in the Bay Area (in Business) Lampo Leong's Forces • Contemplation (in A&E) Reasons to Celebrate (in Opinion) ACLU Sues Utah Highway Patrol Claims traffic stops target minorities By C.G. Wallace/AP The Utah chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union has filed its first racial profiling lawsuit, alleging that a program designed to stop drug trafficking has degenerated into bogus traffic stops targeting minorities. The ACLU filed the federal lawsuit on June 27 on behalf of 24-year-old Mani Kang of Los Angeles, a Sikh Indian who was stopped by Highway Patrol Officer James Curtis outside of Blanding, Utah in May 1999. “Drugs are a serious problem and crime is a serious problem. But what’s an equally serious problem is judging people on the basis of the color of their skin,” said Stephen Clark, legal director for the Utah chapter of the ACLU. The lawsuit alleges the Department of Public Safety has a policy of targeting drivers based on their race or ethnicity, pulling them over for frivolous violations and subjecting them to illegal searches. Kang said he was not violating any law when a trooper driving the other way on Highway 191 did a U-turn to follow him toward Blanding. When Kang pulled into a gas station, the trooper followed him, he said. He got nervous when the store clerk told him to be cautious. “That patrolman’s after you. He was checking out your car when you were in here, and now he’ll be waiting for you somewhere up the road,” the clerk said, according to the lawsuit. “He does this all the time. Anyone that doesn’t seem from around here, he goes after ... especially if they’re persons of color.” It was at that moment he realized that he was being followed because of his dark skin, he said. “By that time it was concrete and crystallized in my mind,” Kang said June 27. Kang said he was startled several miles down the road when he saw the flashing lights behind his 1990 Chrysler LeBaron. A second patrol car arrived later. “I was extremely nervous. I hadn’t done anything wrong,” Kang said. Although he was told he was pulled over for a lane violation, Kang said he saw no signs on the empty road that would have prohibited him from driving in the passing lane. Kang was given a warning and consented to have his car searched. He said he was frisked and asked to stand away from the car. When nothing was found, Kang was let go. “That whole hour felt like an entire day, it felt just awful. It was a mental form of torture, that hour,” Kang said. “I just started thinking, you know, I bet this has happened to other people as well. I’m not going to put up with this.” Clark said the stop was merely part of a routine procedure used. As proof, he cited the fact that one officer can be heard on the videotape saying he would give Kang the “free-to-go speech.” Highway Patrol spokesman Chris Kramer said that phrase is just law enforcement slang, not procedure, and the lawsuit is simply the result of a misunderstanding. “We’re trying to figure out what [Kang] was reading into this,” Kramer said. According to Utah Highway Patrol records, troopers throughout the state confiscated most narcotics from Caucasians in 1999, or 74.39 percent. That percentage was 71.75 in 1998 and 77.18 in 1997. “We do a tremendous amount of drug interdiction, because [Southern Utah] is a big drug corridor,” said Kramer. “Overwhelmingly, the vast majority [of suspects] are Caucasian, so racial profiling wouldn’t work.”