reason why you might have that difficulty with the communities of color you are there to serve is that they know these facts. that is precisely why the act is essential. the data we have is problem. let's collect the data and put in place some remedies. your point about the supreme court and the equal protection clause giving sufficient comfort to those who have been wronged by the police, that's simply not true. the supreme court case in the case of wren basically allows police officers to make a pretextual stop based on race, ethnicity and national origin. that is the law of the land according to our supreme court. at times the supreme court gets it wrong. that is why we exhort this congress and senate to step in when we know there is a problem that has not yet come to the attention of our supreme court. with all that, i thank you. >> thank you. my time is up. i want to thank all of the

witnesses. this has been a very, very important and useful hearing, and we have some areas of disagreement, which i think we need to explore further. but i want to thank particularly mr. gale and chief davis for your excellent work over the years in law enforcement. and thank the chairman and substituting chairman for their tolerance and patience. >> i think you actually call me the chairman. it's protocol. >> you know, i think i need the advice -- i have a right to remain silent, don't i? >> yes, you do. >> unfortunately, i have an appointment, so i'm going to ask my questions and then you'll get the gavel and you'll be the chairman and get every due respect being called the chairman.

thank you, senator blumenthal. everyone here has talked about the importance of law enforcement officers and the communities they serve. it seems everyone agrees racial profile can undermine trust in the authorities and can cause resentment among the targeted groups. minnesota is home to a large population of sumali americans. in my experience, no community was more upset than the somali country and we learned that a few somali americans had gone back to somalia and become involved with al shabab. when i talked to both the fbi director muller and more importantly when i went back to the twin cities and talked to special agent in charge there, both said that the somali community had been cooperative

in fbi investigations. and i think it was because of actually very good police work and very good work by the fbi in making sure that they earned the trust of the somali community there. my questions are to chief davis and to officer gale. both of you have served as law enforcement officers. how do you earn the trust of the diverse communities that you serve? some of which -- some of whom may be initially skeptical of the police? >> thank you, senator, and one stop at a time. one day at a time. one interaction at a time. i think when people -- i think we have to, one, acknowledge the history police have played. the role of law enforcement with regard to race in this country. we still have generations of people that remember the segregation. generations of people that are

still here that remember when the police were the enforcement tool and rule of law with regard to jim crow and black code laws. we have to acknowledge we might start off with this lack of trust and confidence. it's one interaction at a time. the first thing law enforcement can do is acknowledgement. take our heads out of the sand and acknowledge that we have this horrific history. we should acknowledge that we, whether intentionally or not are still engaging in practices that have a very disparity result in regard to people of color, whether intended or not. we should put defensiveness down and realize we're here to serve, not be served and only going to be successful if the community engages with us, and the more we engage with them the safer we make them. the safer we make our communities, the more they'll partner with us. with the evidence that's showing time and time again of each major city and community, the stronger the relationship between the police and minority communities, the greater the crime reduction is going to be. we do it one interaction at a

time. we do it by holding officers accountable and we do it by acknowledging that which is in front of us. there is no greater insult as a minority is for someone to look me in my eyes and insult my intelligence by telling me there is not profiling when everything about me knows that it is. that happens with our communities and we need to stop doing that. >> officer gale? >> i think i agree with the chief that you have to do it one person at a time. but i think you have to be more global. you have to look at the community you serve and the different populations in that community and you have to make a concerted effort to be in those communities and having dialogue with those people and you have to listen. and it doesn't matter that you might not agree with the things that they say. years ago i was in the military and i went to a leadership school and they had a manual that said any problem real or perceived is still a problem, and i agree with that and i've held to that.

it doesn't matter if it's not the actual problem. if it's perceived to be a problem by someone or by a group of someones, we have to listen, we have to validate it and dialogue and we have to take and train agencies to understand who these populations are. that they're serving. what the concerns are those agencies are. i agree also with chief davis that, you know, we have to acknowledge the history of law enforcement. it has not always been one of stellar conduct and i think that that's being done in a lot of organizations. i think in the fraternal order of police we talk about it very honestly and candidly with our membership and say, this is the way you need to go to improve your relations with the communities that you serve. and so it's important to do those things, to hear what they have to say. but it's also important to explain to them what the challenges are. what we have to do if we're going to protect people. what, you know -- what we're

faced with as the challenges, when we are protecting communities, and it's important for us to illustrate that to individuals in the community. because, you know, no one's perfect. but if we understand each other better and we dialogue more, i think when there are these honest misunderstandings, we can move past them. >> thank you. mr. romero, in your written testimony on behalf of the aclu, you wrote about a recent, recently uncovered fbi training materials that rely on bigoted stereotypes of muslims. i think we can all agree that those materials are not acceptable. fbi director mueller acknowledged that those materials damaged the fbi's relationship with muslim communities and i commend chairman durbin for his recent letter to the fbi on the subject and i'm working on a letter to

express my concerns as well. mr. romero, what actions should the fbi take to show that it is serious about reforming its training programs? >> thank you for the question, senator franken. and, yes, what i would first point out is, of course, those memos and files and training manuals surprised us. when we used the freedom of information act we go asking for documents that we don't know exist. and so we used the freedom of information act as democracy's x-ray. how do get information we need. that questions, hunches, based on conduct of what we've seen already when the fbi's been tracking young muslim men between the ages of 18 and 33 asking them to come in for voluntary fingerprinting, photographing, mapping out mosques. we had a hunch they had to have some training materials that were going to be troubling and problematic.

and lamentably our hunches were borne out. i think frankly, one thing the fbi needs to, i would encourage, and director mueller is a man with whom we have great disagreements. we've sued him dozens of times, but for the record, he's a man of enormous credibility. he's probably the man in the justice department both under the bush and the obama team in whom i have the greatest personal regard and respect. sen quo non. and with all that i encourage you to encourage him to take a much more active position on these threat assessments, which i fear are only the tip of the iceberg. the attorney general guidelines allow now them to begin investigations on anyone they choose so long as they can claim they're doing it to gain information on criminal activities, national security or foreign intelligence. and the amount of reporting on those threat assessments is

rather limited, as we all know. asking those tough questions, how many of these threat assessments have been opened? how many of them are ongoing? they allow them to collect unlimited physical surveillance. we encourage the attorney general to retire the use of these threat assessments, but at the very first step, you can ask the fbi to do more vigorous reporting on you, even if it is en camera. retraining is essential. remember, all the folks that got that lovely little chart showing how the arabic mind is a cluster mind, and i'm quoting verbatim. is a cluster thinker while the western mind tends to be a linear thinker. they were trained on this. so until we retrain them and tell them that that's not the case, was never the case, they're going to continue to do those activities. and so i think retraining is essential, and probing into the

assessments and have those assessments are used particularly in a muslim context would be a place of important focus. >> thank you. thank you, mr. chairman. i notice you're back. you already took the gavel. didn't you? thank you all. thank you. >> senator kuntz. >> thank you, chairman durbin. thank you for calling this hearing for your long and passionate and vigilant advocacy for civil rights and for your real leadership in this area for this legislation and for this hearing. in my own role prior to becoming a senator as county executive, i worked hard in the supervision of a 380-sworn officer department to ensure we had an effective and strong outreach, not just traditional subject to harassment and communities like

the african-american and latino communities but also post-9/11 making sure there was better training and outreach in relationship with our muslim community and given incidents that occurred in our community making sure we stayed as a policing organization engaged. and accountable. and i just wanted to start, officer gale and chief davis, by thanking you for your leadership in the policing community and for your service to the public. i appreciate your starting by just helping me understand what's the impact on a police force? that practices racial profiling, where it's either part of the policy or training, part of history or part of current practice? what's the impact on professionalism, promotion advancement and cooperation with communities? that's been touched on. you noticed because of votes, a number of us have had to step in and out and i'd be interested in your response. >> thank you. i think it's multiple parts by me. inside the organization, which we did not talk about, an agency that does engage in systemic racial profiling usually has very low morale, because now you have ulcers inside the organization opposed. those engaging in it and it

causes a conflict within itself. within a community, i would also probably argue that the community is suffering, because now you have a practice in which is losing touch with the community, making them very ineffective. in today's society, makes it much more expensive. because now you have the cost of crime going up. you have the cost of litigation, because people are now seeking some type of redress through the court system. and you have low morale issues, which means you have increases in sick leave and workers' comp claims, so it's a very systemic gesture when you engage in racial profiling. as you know as a county executive, you cannot serve the community effectively if they don't trust you. there's some historic trust, there's always going to be some challenges and strains, but to the extent that there's

legitimate outreach and we listen and respond and respect, we have a better chance of being successful. the issue of racial profiling, although we're talking about race, from an executive's perspective is poor managerial practice, it causes internal strife, it just is not an effective strategy. >> do you agree with this bad policing? does it have consequences internally? >> absolutely, the consequences of bad management in any agency result in, you know, these perceptions in the community that the police are not responsive and that they're victimizing citizens and they have a rogue force. but that's where it all drives from, it drives from the management philosophy of the organization. and the chief is right, it also results in low morale.

it also results in low morale because you have people in the agency agreeing with the fact and there's no accountability for officers who are clearly operating outside professional conduct. it has low morale when the community that we serve then becomes complaining about us being unprofessional or about the reputation of the agency being that of a victimizer, as opposed to a protector. so -- and the chief is absolutely right, it starts with the management. it starts with the very top person. and the top level people. allowing these things to occur in individuals that they won't hold accountable. as a captain in my agency, i believe it's my charge to hold people accountable when they conduct themselves unprofessionally. and i do so. i think some people have said here, you know, well, there seems to be some kind of great things going on in denver or what have you, i'm just going to

tell you and i love my city, it is a great city, and please feel free to visit any time, i'm just going to tell you, we hold people accountable in my agency, we hold them accountable and that's respected. we don't have to have specific rules that say you can't do this, because we all know what bad behavior is when we see it and if you challenge people and you hold them accountable, then there won't be a problem. the end result is that officers will just shut down and not conduct any type of police work, then the city doesn't get protected. >> senator, if i may add one point, there's a phrase we have especially for chiefs that cause about a moment of pause, and what happens is that when the agency doesn't have the type of trust and confidence on the issues that we're discussing, if you look at history, it was caused by some sort of incident.

it may be a legal incident, it may be something by itself would not make sense to call such a response, but it reflects years of abuse and neglect. as one of the congress persons said earlier, enough is enough, so when agencies are blind to this and systematically engaging in it, they're sitting on a power keg, and that's when we see large demonstrations and start having race riots. the lack of acknowledgement of what we had before. >> if i have heard all the members of the panel right, who have said that rarnl profiling is bad policy. and then you you have effective, on your ability to effectively place. that's the -- i wanted to move,

if i could about professional standards, if you look at reasonable -- allows law enforcement to stop and question individuals, as opposed to probable cause. profiling appears to me just at first blush to be a major problem in the area of reasonable suspicion. how do you see that playing out? and then i'm going to want to move to this bill and why it might be necessary. professor? >> thank you for the question, senator. you're absolutely right, you put your finger on something very important. the reasonable suspicious standard arises in terry versus ohio the case that allows people to use stop and frisk when there is reasonable fact-based suspicion. the problem is, and where this intertwined with profiling is that reasonable suspicion is a very low legal standard, it is lower than probable cause. when i'm in class, i like to say probable cause is somewhere near

my waist, reasonable suspicion is below my knees. and you have a standard where you can use very little evidence to take significant police action. and where we see this showing up in the context of profiling, to give you one example, is in the stop and risk activity in new york city over many years and it's a good example because there is very significant amount of data on this. we often find that even though the standard is reasonable suspicion, there is hardly anything recorded and sometime nothing at all reported. the idea is simply thought of as boilerplate. so those kind of -- >> mr. mayor, if racial profiling can be a violation of

civil rights, which i believe it is, under a whole line of cases. these are not cases i'm familiar with personally, but that's the line of analysis, i think by the supreme court that has do we not see more enforcement actions for racial profiling by the department of justice? and if you would just follow up on professor harris' comment. how do we end the gap between the formal policies, create police entities that as captain gail describes it are accountable,s professional and where at all legals are engaged in moving us forward toward a more just and effective policing community? >> when you look -- thank you for the question. when you look at the testimony we submitted, you'll see that we detail a number of the seminole racial profiling cases. in fact, some of them brought by david harris. what might be instructive for

why this piece of legislation is essential,to track when the incident occurred and when the case was decided. you'll note that in many instances, the one i'm looking at now, you're looking at a span of several years of time between when you get pulled over by a police officer on a highway, and the case of robert wilkins. and ultimately, when that case was decided by a court. and for many minority group members, especially those in our communities and families who lack resources to hire private attorneys, it is not simple or economic to retain private counsel even when you've been wronged. we've turned away many, many cases. simply because we lack the resources to take on every single case. we take on case where's we think we have an ability to have a high impact to change systemically at the highest levels. the number of heartbreaking

letters i send back saying, i understand you were profiled by the police, but we have them under a consent decree, we'll throw your fact scenario into the consent decree, it doesn't give the individual much comfort. i think that's really what's at stake here, is i think the burden on hundreds of thousands of new yorkers, let's say the 400,000 plus that i cited have been wrongfully stopped by the police, the idea that you would ask 400,000 new yorkers who were innocent and yet stopped by the police to file all individual lawsuits, i can't believe that any member of this chamber would be the efficient use of our resources. this is one of the times by the senate taking action and putting in place a legal regime, and being able to stop the type of rush to the courthouse steps you do, both the economy and our civil liberties service.

>> senator, if i may, the one area going into the question you have about the lawsuits or why people can't file the complaint. in many cases, i think the bigger challenge, is that it may follow a legal stop. this is why the legislation is critical. why data collection is critical. i think when we think profiling people, we think the stop itself may not have legal cause. we have a freeze in policing, give me a car, two minute s anda vehicle code and i'll find a reason to stop you, cracked windshield, bald tires. you'll see those discretionary stops being used often. where it makes it hard on an individual basis is a person's complaining about being stopped. but the fact that they did have a cracked taillight, and it makes it hard for that individual case. what you need to do is look at it holistically, that's the 10,000th cracked windshield and

all of them may be of one race or group color. >> my time has passed. i'm glad the issue was raised about, the issue of racial profiling. i'm grateful for your crafting a bill that insists on training, on data collection, and on a narrowly crafted response to a significant problem, thank you very much. >> thafrmgs, senator koonz. when you're dealing with the question of whether or not race or ethnicity or profiling was the sole cause for the stop, you run into a real obstacle. our staff did a little research on this, it turns out this isn't the first time congress has talked about this. argue discrimination should only be prohibited if it's based on race and ethnicity it has a lineage.

a case in new jersey, argued, this amendment would place on persons attempting to prove a violation of the sanction, no matter how clear the violation was, an obstacle so great, as to make the time completely worthless. the senator of washington said limiting the civil rights act based solely on race would negate the entire purpose of what we're trying to do courts have set a standard which make it extremely difficult. and chief davis, your examples, there may be a cracked taillight was the reason they're being pulled over. what we found in illinois, incidentally, to go to my own state, consent searches by the illinois state police between 2004 and 2010, hispanic motorists in my state were 2 to 4 times more likely to be issed. african-american motorists, 2 to 3 times more likely, to be subject to consent searches.

white motorists were 9% more likely than hispanic motorists and 26% more likely than african-american motorists to have contraband in their vehicles. it made no sense to do this. and yet it is done. i thank you for this hearing, and i'm sorry it took ten years to get back together. and i'm sorry we need to get back together. to put it in historic perspective, if you go back to the nation's beginning, our founding fathers started wrestling with issues of race and gender and religion, and this year's presidential campaign wrestles with issues of race, gender and religion. it's an ongoing debate in this nation. there have been moments of great leadership. there have been moments of ignaminious conduct. this will hold every member of this country accountable. i came to this job saying,

remembering what bill clinton once said when he was being interviewed before he became president. is there any issue you will not compromise on? he said i will never compromise on race. he said that as a man who grew up in arkansas and saw segregation. i thought that is a good standard, durbin, you saw it too in your hometown. hold to that standard. and i looked back and remember in my time in the house of representatives, voting for a measure that turned out to have a dramatically negative racial impact. the establishment of the crack/cocaine standard, sentencing of 100 to 1 fp years later i was given an opportunity to try to make that right, and bring it back to 1 to 1. i couldn't get the job done. because of the nature of compromise, it's been reduced to 18 to 1, still a terrible disparity, but a dramatic improvement. what happened as a result of that bad vote by black and white congressmen, we lost trust in the african-american community.

many people serving on juries said i'm not going to do this, i'm just not going to send that person away for 10 or 20 years because of a crack/cocaine violation. we lost their trust. and i can see it when the judges came and faulked to us about it. we moved back to try to establish the trust of that community by doing the right thing, but we need to be held accountable. whether we're in elected or appointed office in our government. we serve, we serve the public. and that accountability has to be part of that service. this is not going to resolve the issue. i think as i mentioned earlier, it is more complicated today because of concealed carry. some of the standards being established in the states, more complicated today because the war on terror raises legitimate concerns about the safety of our nation. and how far will we go to respect our national security without violating our basic values under the constitution, i thank you all for your testimony, it's been a positive

part of this conversation, which we need to engage in even further. there's a lot of interest in today's hearings. 225 organizations submitted testimony, thank goodness they didn't come here to speak. about the we're glad to have their testimony and we'll put it in the record without objection. it will include the episcopal church, the japanese american citizens league, the leadership conference for settlement on human rights. national council of araza. south asian-americans poverty law center and these statements will be made part of the record which will be kept open for a week for additional statements. it's possible someone will send you a written question. if they do, we hope you'll respond in a timely way, without further comment i thank all of my witnesses for their patience and attending this hearing.