| In the interest of speed and timeliness, this story is fed directly from the Associated Press newswire and may contain spelling or grammatical errors. |
LA approves $5 million for police device to record racial data
Thursday April 17, 2003LOS ANGELES (AP) The City Council on Wednesday approved the $5 million purchase of portable handheld computers that police officers will use to record racial data from every traffic stop.
The Los Angeles Police Department is required to collect race and other information on every police stop as part of an agreement with the federal government aimed at ending racial profiling and other civil rights abuses.
The consent decree was signed off on by the City Council in November 2000 after months of negotiations with U.S. Justice Department officials. It is designed to correct what the Justice Department called a pattern of civil rights violations by Los Angeles police, including the alleged beating, robbing and framing of innocent people by some renegade officers.
Officers have collected the information since November 2001 by completing paper forms listing the gender, age, ``apparent descent'' and other information of each person stopped.
The forms are returned to the police station, where they are scanned by special equipment. The Police Department recently began posting the data on its Web site.
The new devices will make it easier for officers to collect the information, said Ron Deaton, the city's chief legislative analyst. They can enter it by simply swiping a driver's license over the computer like a credit card.
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