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Destiny Remezas

Information gathered from traffic stops throughout the state shows discrepancies between how Caucasian drivers and drivers of other racial groups are treated.

The fact that Caucasian drivers are two and a half times less likely to be subjected to a consent search, which is when there is no legal justification for the search, than all other racial groups combined is the most troubling, Gov. Rod Blagojevich said in a news release.

For every 1,000 minority drivers in Illinois, 22.72 were subjected to consent searches during a traffic stop.

The Carbondale Police Department and campus police reported lower numbers than the state average in this area. The number of searches by city police was 17 per 1,000 minority drivers stopped, and the campus police reported 7.3 per 1,000 minorities stopped.

Police departments across the state collected and reported this and other information about traffic stops made in 2004 to the Illinois Department of Transportation.

The difference between the state numbers and the city numbers cannot be simply explained, Carbondale Police Chief Steve Odum said.

"I think it's a totality of the experience of the officers, the level of training and the nature of the community," Odum said.

In his release, Blagojevich suggested addressing the issue by creating a task force of community leaders and civic groups to focus on solutions.

Carbondale already has a similar type of group called the Human Relations Commission. The commission was created in 2001 when 60 complaints were made about how police reacted to a block party, which mainly black students attended.

In others areas of the study, however, Carbondale has similar percentages as the state average.

Minority drivers make up 29.69 percent of the city's driving population but accounted for 33.72 percent of the traffic stops reported by the city and 37.54 percent of the traffic stops reported by campus police. A study of the state's total numbers showed similar percentages to that of Carbondale.

The University community is unique and while consensus information was used in the state's statistics, University events often bring a diversity of people into the community, said Todd Sigler, director of the Department of Public Safety.

"Those are aspects unique to SIU, and, I would suspect, all the college campuses," Sigler said.

Sigler said he told the Illinois Department of Transportation that Carbondale's unique population can affect its numbers, however, those details were left out of the department's section of the report.

Sigler and Odum examined the information while recording it for the Illinois Department of Transportation.

"I shared department-wide data with everyone," Sigler said. "What we plan to do is continue to monitor and watch the situation."

The Carbondale Police Department did not start to examine its numbers until about eight months into the study, but having the numbers available has helped the department better understand what needs to be done to improve the situation in the city, Odum said.

"I did not know if I had an expectation because we have never done something like this before," Odum said.

Reporter Destiny Remezas can be reached at destiny_remezas@dailyegyptian.com