From: [REDACTED] at [silat.galaxy] (Daniel Liebster,MRE 2N-275A,4797,,21493)
Newsgroups: alt.drugs
Subject: racism and the wod
Date: 20 Jul 93 17:26:58 GMT

FBI To Probe Whether Florida Sheriff Sought Out Blacks in Traffic Stops
By LARRY MARGASAK
Associated Press Writer
	   WASHINGTON (AP) _ The FBI will investigate allegations that the
Volusia County, Fla., sheriff's department made race-based traffic
stops of black motorists in suspected drug cases.
	   Attorney General Janet Reno, in a letter released Friday, wrote
Rep. John Conyers the bureau would probe stops made along
Interstate 95, as part of the sheriff's program to seize assets of
suspected drug offenders.
	   ``You can be assured that if the evidence shows that there was a
prosecutable violation of federal criminal civil rights statutes,
appropriate action will be taken,'' Reno wrote.
	   Conyers, D-Mich., chairman of the House Government Operations
Committee, requested the investigation in a letter to Reno after
testimony before a panel subcommittee in June.
	   The chairman said Volusia County Sheriff Robert Vogel submitted
materials ``which confirm that over 70 percent of his office's
asset seizures involved black motorists.''
	   Vogel said Friday he welcomed an FBI investigation of his
Interstate 95 cash seizure tactics.
	   ``We welcome any review,'' the sheriff said. ``We've said this
time and time again. If anybody else wants to review it, let's get
it done. Let's get it behind us and go on and do our job.''
	   Vogel has repeatedly denied using race as part of a motorist
profile to determine whom to stop.
	   Since March 1989, the office's Selective Enforcement Team has
seized about $8 million from people it suspects are drug
traffickers, while making arrests in only 25 percent of the cases,
according to one study.
	   A black woman motorist told the House committee that in 1990,
Volusia deputies stopped her on Interstate 95 and seized $19,000 _
money she described as an insurance payment for damage to her
Charleston, S.C. residence during Hurricane Hugo.
	   She was not charged with a crime and eventually was repaid only
$15,000.
	   Ms. Washington is a plaintiff in a class action suit filed by
the NAACP against Vogel last month in federal court in Orlando. The
suit alleges that the sheriff's department has used a race-based
drug courier profile since 1989 that targets African-American and
Hispanic motorists on the interstate.
	   Conyers wrote Reno that the NAACP has provided the subcommittee
with an affidavit from a former deputy sheriff. The document, he
said, ``describes the race-based practices of the office and at
least one incident in which Sheriff Vogel personally witnessed an
apparently pretextual stop of a black motorist.''
	   Conyers, in a statement replying to Reno's letter, said, ``My
subcommittee recently heard outrageous testimony about the
targeting of African-Americans traveling through Volusia County.
	   ``Today, Janet Reno sent a message that this kind of racial
discrimination by law enforcement will not be tolerated.''