Officers in rural Siskiyou County, fueled by racial prejudice and drug fear-mongering, are stopping the county’s small population of Asian American drivers at 12 times the rate of other drivers, according to a new lawsuit in federal court.
County supervisors are also restricting Asian American residents’ access to water and illegally placing liens on their property, in a policy “designed to drive a disfavored racial minority from the county,” the suit said. It was filed Wednesday in Sacramento by the American Civil Liberties Union and Asian Americans Advancing Justice as a proposed class action on behalf of the county’s 1,200 Asian American residents.
The suit said the policy began several years ago with reports of increased cannabis cultivation in the northwestern California county coinciding with increases in Asian American refugees moving to the county, shortly before the outbreak of a pandemic that then-President Donald Trump called “the Chinese flu.” Then-Sheriff Jon Lopey described all Asian Americans as pot growers and told county supervisors in January 2019 that he would assign his officers to conduct traffic stops in the county, a job they had not performed in the past, the suit said.
Jeremiah LaRue, appointed sheriff last year, continued the policy and was quoted as blaming alleged increases in drug cultivation and overall crime on “Chinese nationals that are in our community.” In 2021, the suit said, Asian Americans made up 2.4% of the county’s population and more than 28% of those stopped by deputies — and during daytime hours, when a driver’s race is more visible, they were 60% more likely to be stopped than at night.
Compared to white drivers, who were flagged less often than other groups, Asian Americans were 17 times as likely to be be stopped by officers, the suit said.
Asian American drivers who were stopped by deputies were held 56% longer than white drivers and were 25 times as likely to be searched, the suit said. But nearly three-fourths of Asian Americans were released without citation or arrest, and only 2.3% of the stops resulted in seizures of cannabis.
That’s a stark contrast to other law enforcement agencies across the state, whose officers typically stop Asian people at far lower rates than other ethnic or racial groups, data shows.
The Chronicle recently analyzed police stop data, released by the state attorney general and found Asian drivers and pedestrians were the least likely to be stopped by officers in the state’s 15 largest law enforcement jurisdictions in 2020. The data is based on the officer’s perception of a person’s race.
In San Francisco, white people were nearly three times more likely to be stopped than Asian people, relative to their share of the population. In Los Angeles and Oakland, white people were about two times more likely to be stopped than Asian people.
Siskiyou County has not yet been required to report similar racial profiling data to the state. In 2018, California began requiring large law enforcement agencies to collect demographic data about every person stopped by their officers.
The reporting requirement expands to all agencies this year, including tiny Siskiyou County, which has a population of less than 44,000 people and is situated in a mountainous region on the Oregon border. The plaintiffs behind the lawsuit against the county used data from the computer-aided dispatch systems in officers’ vehicles to calculate the alleged disparity in stops of Asian residents.
One plaintiff in the suit said he was first stopped, for no apparent reason, in the summer of 2020 by a deputy who approached his vehicle holding a gun at his side. The deputy searched the vehicle, found a small fruit knife, took it away and let him go. Then in the spring of 2021 another deputy stopped him on the way back from the laundromat and told him to get out with his hands raised and dumped the laundry on the ground. After the deputy searched and found nothing, the plaintiff said, he had to go back to the laundromat and wash his clothes again.
The suit also quoted Ray Haupt, a county supervisor, as telling a fellow supervisor in a June 2020 email that “I am fearful that we are losing a portion of our county and being turned into a no-go zone, similar to what we see in foreign countries like Europe where Sharia Law has replaced local governance.”
After county supervisors voted in 2020 to prohibit property owners from extracting groundwater that was later used to cultivate cannabis, the suit said, 68% of those prosecuted were Asian Americans. The suit said they were also targeted by ordinances in the spring of 2021 that required permits to transport water from an owner’s property or to carry water in large containers on trucks, forcing some residents out of their homes, until the measures were blocked by U.S. District Judge Kimberly Mueller last September.
The suit also cited a 2020 ordinance that increased maximum fines for cannabis cultivation from $500 to $5,000 per day and authorized the county to place a lien on the property, which could be used to foreclose a home loan when the fine was unpaid. Such liens are not authorized by state law, the suit said.
The suit seeks judicial findings that the county and its officers have engaged in discrimination and court orders against bias in traffic stops and water and lien policies. It does not seek damages.
LaRue and Haupt did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Bob Egelko and Dustin Gardiner (he/him) are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. Email: begelko@sfchronicle.com and dustin.gardiner@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @BobEgelko and @dustingardiner
"asian" - Google News
August 09, 2022 at 04:30AM
https://ift.tt/FHQSq8v
Officers in this Northern California county stop Asian drivers at 12 times the rate of other drivers, lawsuit claims - San Francisco Chronicle
"asian" - Google News
https://ift.tt/tLlzZ3g
Shoes Man Tutorial
Pos News Update
Meme Update
Korean Entertainment News
Japan News Update
No comments:
Post a Comment