Racial Profiling

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FOX CITY POLICE DEPARTMENT
POLICY AND PROCEDURES

Effective Date
01-01-2008
Policy Number
Policy 5-6
Reevaluation Date
2011
No. of Pages
3
Subject
RACIAL PROFILING
Special Instructions:
Replaces current policy Section I, Chapter XVII, dated 01-04-02

  1. PURPOSE

    It is the purpose of the Fox City Police Department to establish guidelines for the fair treatment of all individuals regardless of a person’s race, ethnic origin, national origin, or religious beliefs.

  2. POLICY

    It is the policy of the Fox City Police Department not to make nor tolerate law enforcement decisions due to race-based generalizations and acts.

  3. BACKGROUND

    Officers have a broad range of discretion when performing their official duties. Decisions to make traffic contacts, to detain and investigate, and to take enforcement action are among the most common. It is important for this agency to be fair and impartial in law enforcement. Specifically, this agency adopts the values of integrity, professionalism, and compassion, along with the goal of emphasizing service, courtesy, ethics, diversity, and cultural awareness. These values and this goal specifically contradict behavior and activities that would negatively generalize about people based on gender, race, or ethnicity.

  4. DEFINITIONS
  5. Racial Profiling:
    Any police action against an individual that is reliant upon that person’s race, ethnicity, or national origin instead of his/her actual behavior

    Based Generalizations:
    Broad, stereotypical conclusions about a person based on race or ethnicity

    Racial Epithets:
    Derogatory phrases and terms that are used to describe a person’s race or ethnicity

  6. GENERAL PROVISIONS

    1. Officer Action

      1. Information that identifies the person as being or having been engaged in criminal activity is an acceptable means of non-racial profiling. There is almost uniform consensus about two corollary principles that follow from adopting this definition of racial profiling.
        1. Police may not use racial or ethnic stereotypes as factors in selecting whom to stop and whom to search.
        2. Police may use race or ethnicity to determine whether a person matches a description of a particular suspect.


      3. Law enforcement decisions to stop, detain, question, further investigate, search, warn, or arrest an individual are to be made solely on the basis of reasonable suspicion and probable cause irrespective of the gender, race, or ethnicity of the people involved.

      4. Tactics used to determine gender, race, ethnicity, or other individual factors of a motorist or other vehicle occupants before obtaining reasonable suspicion or probable cause are not to be used.

      5. Tactics to determine gender, race, or ethnicity are only for use when such individual factors are previously identified characteristics of a person whom officers are lawfully attempting to locate.

      6. Racial epithets shall not be used in conversation or written communications unless they are being reported or spoken by another person during the completion of an official report or as testimony at an official hearing.

  8. PROCEDURES

    1. General Employee Responsibility

      All employees shall avoid race-based generalizations and acts, which contribute to negative personal and community relations. All employees shall:

      1. Treat all persons contacted with the respect and dignity as one would wish to be treated if the situation were reversed.

      2. Take enforcement action based upon reasonable suspicion and probable cause.

      3. Refrain from using inappropriate phrases or terms.

      4. Report all infractions by co-workers to their supervisor.

      5. On traffic stops where no citation or warning is issued, officers will put notes in the call explaining the reason for the stop.

    3. Supervisor Responsibility

      Supervisors shall document reports of and infractions of this policy. They shall investigate any breach of public confidence made manifest by race-based generalizations, uttering of racial epithets, or other forms of discrimination.



This policy is for internal use only and does not enlarge an officer’s civil or criminal liability in any way. It should not be construed as the creation of a higher standard of safety or care in an evidentiary sense, with respect to third party claims. Violations of this policy, if proven, can only form the basis of a complaint by this department, and then only in a non-judicial administrative setting.