By Scott B. Wong
Daily Bruin Reporter
Last winter, Jason Clark and five other African American
students were questioned by university police at the Kerckhoff
patio minutes before they were to perform in their African Arts
Choral Ensemble.
“They surrounded us and interrogated us and said they
heard we were smoking marijuana,” said Clark, a fourth-year
sociology student.
The ensemble members were not using illegal substances and not
wearing any gang clothes but were dressed in casual attire, Clark
said.
“The police made us feel really uncomfortable and
wouldn’t let us leave,” he said. “They
didn’t seem that they believed us until they had evidence
that we were performing.”
The fact that ensemble members were gathered in a group, Clark
said, led police to assume they were doing something illegal.
“Because we were six black guys, they believed we were
smoking weed,” he said. “We would have been treated
differently if we were white.”
“We would have been asked questions rather than
interrogated.”
He said police are accosting students in places where they are
trying to get an education.
“We have to deal with this when we’re out on the
streets; now we have to deal with this at school,” he
said.
Racial profiling, the practice of treating race as an indication
of possible criminality, gained national media attention in the
cases of Amadou Diallo, an unarmed African immigrant killed by New
York police as he reached for his wallet, and Los Alamos physicist
Wen Ho Lee.
The United States government brought a 59-count indictment
against Lee, alleging he was a spy, providing secret information to
a foreign country with intent to harm the U.S. Lee was later
acquitted of all but one of espionage.
The UCPD has also come under heavy fire, as recent police
practices have prompted racial profiling complaints among
students.
Last month, police released sketches of a suspect they believed
sexually assaulted women in campus parking lots.
Because witnesses were unsure of the suspect’s ethnicity,
police released two different computer-generated sketches ““
one a Latino and the other an African American man.
The composite drawings incited criticism among students of
color. However, others believed they promote awareness within the
community.
“I think it’s better to have some sort of
description than having nothing at all,” said Hannah Koo, a
second-year civil-engineering student.
Still, the distinction between the two ethnic groups should have
been obvious enough not to warrant two different sketches, Clark
said.
“It seems that police are pin-pointing minorities,”
he said.
The information was so vague, it did not provide any valuable
information to the UCLA community, said Antonio Moore, a
fourth-year political science student.
“Don’t say he’s two or three different races
““ blacks and Latinos generally don’t look alike,”
Moore said.
But it is often difficult to determine an individual’s
ethnic origin, said UCPD Detective Selby Arsena.
“It’s been my experience that someone can look one
nationality and be something else,” he said.
UCPD Detective Leo del Rosario, who specializes in computer
composite sketches, said inconsistencies should be attributed to
witness descriptions rather than any departmental wrongdoing.
“All witnesses perceive people differently, eyeing in on
things that are important to them,” he said. “The job
of the police is to facilitate the witness, not guide them through
the program.”
Despite portraying different ethnicities, the animated
composites share consistent facial structures, according to del
Rosario.
The software program that UCPD uses to create computer-generated
sketches has safeguards which limit the interaction between the
composite maker and witness to avoid undesirable influence in the
composite, del Rosario said.
“It’s all up to the witness,” he said.
“The police are not supposed to lead the witness to any
conclusions.”
The program prompts the witness for the suspect’s physical
characteristics, such as gender, apparent race, approximate age and
hair color.
Some questions, however, ask for specific facial features like
skin composition ““ whether there were freckles or acne
““ and nostril shape.
Each category has an “unsure” option, so if the
witness is uncertain, the program will generate the most common
choice consistent with characteristics that have already been
selected.
If witnesses say they are only 50 percent sure of the accuracy
of the drawing, del Rosario said police would not issue that
sketch.
A sketch artist can generate a more precise drawing than a
computer program, but UCPD does not have the resources to hire a
full-time artist, he said.
Despite police practices which attempt to avoid racial bias,
Ruben Rodriguez, a second-year biology student, said he feels
discriminated against because of his skin color.
“The sketches are based on a general idea of how
we’re like,” he said. “It’s saying all
Hispanics can be potential rapists.”
The generality of the sketches indicate police really do not
have any information to go off of, according to Moore.
“They just want to show people they are taking care of the
crime element,” he said.
One student said some minorities are overreacting to the
sketches, which she believes are released to ensure the general
safety of the community.
“If anything bad happens to a black person, they blame it
on their race,” said Sharon Ho, a second-year mechanical
engineering student. “This is a complex that a lot of blacks
have.”
“They need to realize it’s a very serious and
important subject,” she said. “It’s for
everyone’s safety.”
Tritia Toyota and Professor K.W. Lee will be holding a
colloquium “Wen Ho Lee, Racial Profiling and Media Bias:
Perspectives from Two Journalists/Community Activists,” 4 to
6 p.m., Thursday in Dodd 167.