{"id":4386,"date":"2016-05-24T14:06:05","date_gmt":"2016-05-24T19:06:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.scpronet.com\/wordpress\/?p=4386"},"modified":"2016-05-25T21:07:18","modified_gmt":"2016-05-26T02:07:18","slug":"sheriff-leon-lott-updates-network-on-racial-profiling-database","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scpronet.com\/wordpress\/2016\/05\/24\/sheriff-leon-lott-updates-network-on-racial-profiling-database\/","title":{"rendered":"Sheriff Leon Lott says Network’s racial profiling project boosts accountability"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"sherrif1\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Richland County Sheriff Lott shared the progress and challenges on racial profiling in South Carolina at the Network’s spring strategy conference in Columbia.
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

Brett Bursey, executive director of the SC Progressive Network<\/a>:<\/strong> Sheriff Lott has been a friend of the people for quite some time now. He participated with Joe Neal and I in television work about racial profiling databases in 2001. And Richland County has taken the lead on that. And the sheriff has taken a little bit of time off from campaigning for his, how many terms?<\/p>\n

Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott<\/strong>: Sixth term.<\/p>\n

Bursey<\/strong>: For his sixth term, so he\u2019s obviously doing a good job as Richland County sheriff. So let\u2019s hear it for Leon Lott. (applause)<\/p>\n

Sheriff Lott: <\/strong>Thank you.<\/p>\n

The problem with all that data is nobody really looks at it, half the agencies don\u2019t turn it in, and it\u2019s not enough data. Back in \u201999 and 2000 we were looking at racial profiling and being transparent and creating a citizens advisory council. We required that every deputy, when they stop somebody, they have to call in the stop, location where they stopped them, and why they stopped them. And when they get through with the stop, we have to get the age, race and what they did.<\/p>\n

So we have the whole picture, and then our dispatcher takes that and – through the computers we\u2019ve got – we have each officer’s name with the data. And we have somebody look at it; it doesn\u2019t sit there like the state\u2019s data. We have supervisors look at it, and we check our officers. Is this officer working in a Latino community? Who is he stopping? Is he in a white community? Is he in an African -American community? We have to look at what community they work in to determine who\u2019s being stopped. Then you have to look and see are they just stopping one race? One sex?<\/p>\n

We actually identified an officer who was stopping Hispanic females, and we saw that there was a problem. So we started pulling his tapes and we found out he was profiling Hispanic females, and actually had him on tape assaulting one. We didn\u2019t just terminate him, we arrested him.<\/p>\n

What we were doing in 1999 and 2000 had been so successful with us\u2014Rep. Joe Neal and Brett [Bursey] said we need to do statewide. They started off modeling after what we were doing, but by the time [the bill] got passed it was so watered-down it was basically ineffective. One of the most blatant things that made it ineffective was that people weren\u2019t forced to do it. We had so many agencies that just weren\u2019t turning in the information. Why isn\u2019t there some penalty for not doing it? There wasn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

So the law really hasn\u2019t been effective. Rep. Joe Neal, a Richland County representative and one of my close friends, we started back again trying to do something to require agencies to do it. And to give us more information. If you\u2019re just doing it for people who get warning tickets, what about people who are stopped and don\u2019t get a warning ticket? Or that you give an actual ticket to? Where\u2019s the data on them?<\/p>\n

So we\u2019re not getting the data on everyone who\u2019s stopped, and that\u2019s what we need-not just a snapshot of a few people who are stopped, but everybody that you stop-and then have it examined. You have to look at what you\u2019re doing and why you\u2019re doing it. And when you do that, you\u2019re able to determine if you have racial profiling. That is the only way you\u2019re going to be able to stop it.<\/p>\n

We go through the education part of it with our deputies. If they know that we\u2019re not going to tolerate anything like that and that you will be arrested and you will be terminated if they do stuff like that, then they have it in their mind that they can\u2019t do it. But if an agency allows it or doesn\u2019t check, then there\u2019s going to be some officers that are actually going to do it. So you have to start at the agency\u2019s head\u2014the ones who put the word out that this is not going to be tolerated in our agencies.<\/p>\n

One of the things we did to help do that was our citizen\u2019s advisory council\u201427 citizens who represent the diverse community we have in Richland County. We\u2019ve had it for 16 years. They come in and look at all of our internal affairs complaints, all the police shootings, all our policies and procedures, they look at every single thing we do. They have a voice in the sheriff\u2019s department, which is the voice of the citizens of Richland County.<\/p>\n

I can\u2019t go around and talk to all 500,000 residents of Richland County, but I can talk to their representatives who represent their community. They see what we do in real live time, not six months later, 10 months, not one year later, but they see it as it happens. If we have a shooting, they\u2019re getting information as soon as I\u2019m getting information so they can take it back to their communities and let communities know what actually happened. They sit on our hiring board.<\/p>\n

When you go through to be a deputy, the last thing you do is go before an interview board. There\u2019s five deputies and two representatives from the citizens advisory board, and each one has an equal vote. We want the citizens to see everything we do. The agencies that hide the information are the agencies that are doing something wrong. If you\u2019re not doing anything wrong, there\u2019s absolutely no reason we can\u2019t be open and honest and transparent with every single thing that we do. That\u2019s what we do at Richland County, and I get criticized for it. I get criticized for it by other sheriffs and other chiefs who don\u2019t believe in it. They don\u2019t believe in collecting data on racial profiling. They don\u2019t believe in having a citizen\u2019s advisory council. They\u2019re totally against it.<\/p>\n

Sen. [Marlon] Kimpson from Charleston County and Sen. John Scott from Richland County introduced two bills in the current session. One bill was for SLED to have a citizens advisory council. The other bill was for agencies over 300,000 to have a citizen\u2019s advisory council. That got shot down immediately<\/em> by the Sheriff\u2019s Association and other law enforcement associations because the sheriffs and chiefs said, “We don\u2019t want the citizens to have oversight of what we\u2019re doing.”<\/p>\n

That to me is absolutely ludicrous and crazy, and I\u2019m ostracized by my fellow sheriffs because I believe in that. I ain\u2019t changing. I\u2019m not.<\/p>\n

\"sheriff2\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Three years ago, I was elected to be president of the South Carolina Sheriff\u2019s Association, and I was to take office this July, so I would have been president in \u201915 and \u201916. After Sen. Kimpson introduced the bill on citizen\u2019s advisory councils, the Sheriff\u2019s Association had a special meeting where they voted me out. They didn\u2019t believe in what I was doing and what I was saying. So I\u2019m not going to be the president, so I can\u2019t help you out on there. But I am going to be your voice and will speak out loud and clear and publicly that we need to do something about the problem in our communities with our law enforcement doing the wrong thing. And we need the citizens to help us police the police. That’s what we need to do. And when we do the right thing, we don\u2019t have to worry about it. And by working together, we can do that.<\/p>\n

The racial profiling bill is not going to go anywhere this year. Hopefully by next year we will be able to strengthen it and make it effective like it needs to be. But what you\u2019re doing [through the Network’s racial profiling project<\/a>] is a start, because if it wasn\u2019t for you, we wouldn\u2019t have anything. We\u2019re doing what we\u2019re doing because it\u2019s the right thing to do. But without you, we weren\u2019t going to Spartanburg, we weren\u2019t going to Greenville, we weren\u2019t going to these other agencies and asking them the hard questions.<\/p>\n

So keep doing what you\u2019re doing, because the good cops don\u2019t mind it one bit. Thank you.<\/p>\n

\u2022\u2022\u2022<\/p>\n

This May 14 speech was transcribed by SC Progressive Network Member Liaison Kyle Criminger and has been edited for length.
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Richland County Sheriff Lott shared the progress and challenges on racial profiling in South Carolina at the Network’s spring strategy conference in Columbia. Brett Bursey, executive director of the SC Progressive Network: Sheriff Lott has been a friend of the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[142,61,44,278],"class_list":["post-4386","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-network-newsevents","tag-brett-bursey","tag-racial-profiling","tag-sc-progressive-network","tag-sheriff-leon-lott"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scpronet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4386","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scpronet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scpronet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scpronet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scpronet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4386"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.scpronet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4386\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4396,"href":"https:\/\/www.scpronet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4386\/revisions\/4396"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scpronet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4386"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scpronet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4386"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scpronet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4386"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}