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.