SACRAMENTO — A growing number of California police agencies have launched programs to track the race and ethnicity of motorists stopped for traffic violations, a voluntary effort to determine whether racial profiling is a common problem in the state.
More than 30 agencies are involved in programs that mirror the requirements of a bill vetoed by Gov. Gray Davis on Tuesday, which would have required the California Highway Patrol and local police departments to collect racial and ethnic data on every motorist they pull over.
Instead, the governor ordered the CHP to gather such information for every stop its officers make, beginning Friday. The program will last three years.
And the governor Wednesday sent letters to Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors and Sacramento Mayor Joe Serna urging them to order their police agencies to begin collecting data from traffic stops, which he said is a local responsibility.
Davis said he vetoed the bill because the state has no business scrutinizing local police.
Police agencies from San Diego to San Francisco have previously agreed to compile detailed statistics and make the data public.
"We think it's the right thing to do," said Tony McElroy, spokesman for the San Diego Police Department, which will start collecting the information in January and is testing a system that will rely on laptop and hand-held computers.
Most local agencies will compile information on drivers that is in line with the requirements of the bill by state Sen. Kevin Murray (D-Culver City): race, ethnicity and age of motorists, why a driver was pulled over, whether a search was conducted, and whether the stop ended in a citation, arrest, warning or no action.
Of the state's largest city police departments, only Los Angeles has been opposed to collecting racial profile data. Last month, Police Chief Bernard C. Parks said such information could be misconstrued and would put a chill on good police work. He said the LAPD does not have a systemic problem of racial profiling.
"If it is going on, we should investigate it and people should report it and we should deal with it as that incident," Parks said in August, after a meeting of the Los Angeles Human Relations Commission. "We should not create statistics." A spokesman for the Police Department said this week that Parks' views have not changed.
