Missouri measure seeks to address policing bias

ST. LOUIS -- Proposed Missouri legislation announced Tuesday would seek to reduce policing bias against blacks by expanding police reporting requirements beyond vehicle stops to include ones involving pedestrians.

The measure, sponsored by Democratic Sen. Jamilah Nasheed of St. Louis and Republican Rep. Shamed Dogan of the St. Louis suburb of Ballwin, is in response to years of evidence of biased policing. It also follows police reform legislation that has come in the wake of the fatal police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson. The August 2014 confrontation between the 18-year-old Brown, who was black, and white police officer Darren Wilson began as a pedestrian stop.

Missouri's 2015 legislative session ended with little action on bills proposed in response to Brown's shooting, although Republicans and some Democrats touted the passage of a measure limiting powers and revenue of municipal courts. U.S. Justice Department officials criticized municipal courts in the St. Louis area as being profit-driven and frequently targeting blacks.

Nasheed and Dogan's proposal is among many expected during the 2016 session, but it's unclear whether any of the measures stand a better chance of passing than similar bills did in 2015. Republican legislative leaders didn't cite them among their priorities in pre-session interviews.

Nasheed, a frequent presence during protests in Ferguson after the shooting, said the Fair and Impartial Policing Act would "weed out the bad cops for the betterment of our community and law enforcement alike."

"Now is a time to begin to right the wrongs," Nasheed, who's black, said during a news conference Tuesday.

Dogan, who's also black, said most officers act appropriately "but it's just as important when someone's not fulfilling their job properly that it be brought into the light of day."

The Missouri attorney general's office annually releases data on vehicle stops, and it has shown black motorists are far more likely to be pulled over, searched and arrested compared to white drivers.

Besides expanding police reporting requirements to include pedestrian stops, the proposed legislation would mandate expanded training on issues related to biased policing practices in an effort to reduce violence, including education on what the proposal calls the "negative impact of implicit and explicit biases, prejudices, and stereotyping on effective law enforcement."

The measure would require the governor to withhold state funding from agencies that don't submit reports or that submit incomplete reports. Agencies would face review and potential decertification if there's continued racial bias within departments that isn't then fixed. Officers who show a pattern of biased policing would face discipline and could be fired.

Concerns about blacks being singled out by police became a frequent theme of protests after Brown's death. Those demonstrations helped to spur the national Black Lives Matter movement.

A St. Louis County grand jury declined to prosecute Wilson, who left the Ferguson police force in November 2014. The U.S. Department of Justice also cleared Wilson of any civil-rights violations, but issued a scathing report critical of the treatment of blacks by police and courts in Ferguson and other St. Louis-area towns.

Denise Lieberman, co-chairwoman of the Don't Shoot Coalition, a protest group, said the measure proposed by Nasheed and Dogan is important to help restore the credibility of police within the black community. Lieberman said biased policing "is a direct affront to the proposition that the job of police is to protect and serve their communities."

The attorney general's office has been compiling traffic stop data since 2000. Last year's report, released in June, showed the disparity in the rate at which Missouri authorities pulled over black drivers compared to whites surged to its highest level since the state began collecting the data.

The report found African-American drivers were 75 percent more likely than white motorists to be stopped on Missouri's roads. That was nine percentage points higher than the previous year.

The report analyzed nearly 1.7 million traffic stops from 2014.

Ballentine reported from Jefferson City, Mo.