An effort to make justice color-blind

Back in 2004, an Illinois senator with the politically unwieldy name of Barack Obama managed to successfully shepherd legislation that mandated the recording of the race of motorists pulled over in his state.

Fourteen years later, Connecticut Gov. Dannel P. Malloy made sure his state was the first to sign up for a national effort to share racial profiling data collected from municipal police departments as well as state police.

It’s Malloy’s name that is politically unwieldy these days. Not only is he a lame duck, but he holds the dubious title of least popular governor in America, according to a Morning Consult survey.

That hasn’t stopped Malloy from clutching a typically progressive issue in his final months in office.

It also happens to be the right thing to do, at a time when Illinois lawmakers ponder kicking its law to the curb. In Illinois, the sheriffs and police chiefs associations endorsed allowing the program to expire in coming months, citing expense and additional work.

Nothing about racial profiling data is truly black and white. Communities such as Darien and Greenwich, for example, offered reasonable defenses last year that their numbers were negatively skewed in a Central Connecticut State University report because of differing daytime populations and their location off Interstate-95.

That report, “Traffic Stop Data Analysis and Findings, 2015-16,” cited Berlin, Monroe, Newtown, Norwich, Ridgefield and Darien, along with State Troop B in North Canaan, as having disparities in stops of minorities compared with white drivers who were pulled over.

Such reports undoubtedly create unease for police in Connecticut and Illinois, as well as the rest of the nation. Imagine how innocent people of color feel when they are stopped.

Racial profiling didn’t become illegal in Connecticut until the turn of the century (that’s the 21st century). While Malloy likes to boast that data collected in Connecticut has reduced crime, as well as the prison population, he also acknowledges that just 50 of the 107 departments in the state share the information.

“What we ultimately have to do is create a set of circumstances by which every state wants to share that data, by which every state wants to be measured, by which every state wants to make decisions based on the real truth,” Malloy said. “If we start to do that as a nation, we actually will start to undo some of the damage we’ve done to ourselves.”

Transparency regarding profiling is vital, but data is useless if it fails to shape solutions. The goal should be to improve awareness and training so police are better prepared to make the right decisions in the heat of the moment.

The National Justice Database, run by the John Jay College Center for Policing Equity, is a promising effort to give a baseline to the data and produce reports for participating departments.

It will be revealing which states follow Connecticut’s lead, and which further the problem by ignoring it.

Solving this issue can’t be left just to politicians on their way up and on their way out. It won’t go away until every state recognizes that bias knows no borders.

Nothing about racial profiling data is truly black and white.