“Do we have the honesty and courage to acknowledge the possibility that racism may exist even when we do not intend to think and act in a racist manner? What would it be like to live in communities where all people feel welcomed, safe, respected and valued?” Mary Johns, a Presbyterian minister, posed this question to Virginia’s law enforcement — and all Virginians — in a recent letter to the editor.

Johns, a member of the Petersburg VOP Chapter, recently joined the Statewide Racial Profiling Campaign Committee. Since 2002, this VOP campaign has been calling for Virginia’s law enforcement agencies to collect data on traffic stops, and then have it analyzed by qualified professionals for public discussion. We have seen proposals by Senator Henry Marsh and Delegate Jeion Ward to require data collection rejected by General Assembly committees — at the urging of the Virginia State Police.

“Much to our surprise, we found out this summer that the Virginia State Police had in fact been collecting data on traffic stops all along — at least according to the Richmond Times-Dispatch,” said VOP Chairperson Janice “Jay” Johnson. “However, these data were not shared with the public. Nor, apparently, were they analyzed by a qualified expert.”

Nevertheless, the Times-Dispatch based on their “review of [the] state police traffic-stop data,” found in a front-page article that “Racial profiling is not a systemic problem on Virginia’s highways.”

“At least the discussion is on the front page now,” said Sandra Cook, vice chairperson of the VOP State Governing Board. “We will let the people decide if the existence of racial profiling has been disproved.” (One immediate response to the article was that a man with a credible story of being profiled by a State Police officer contacted VOP.)

“Times-Dispatch reporter Mark Bowes, to his credit and at the suggestion of Senator Ken Stolle (R-Virginia Beach), contacted VOP while researching the article. In VOP’s comments to the reporter, we tried to convey the importance of data collection as a management tool,” Johnson said.

In the Times-Dispatch article, Maryland State Police Lt. Mark Carter was quoted on this point. He said that Maryland’s law requiring data collection and analysis of data “allows us, as managers, to look at the numbers regularly from a broader perspective . . . to see if there are any unusual patterns or trends of any kind of disparate behavior toward minorities.”

VOP was soon attacked in editorials and letters to the editor on the grounds that the State Police numbers proved there was no profiling in Virginia. One writer said of VOP that we “do not let little things like the facts get in the way.”

Oddly enough, that same letter writer urged the General Assembly to pass a law requiring data collection — so that VOP will “shut up.”

Mary Randolph-Preston, along with Mary Johns and VOP staff, met recently with the Governor’s Director of Policy Brian Shepard, Deputy Secretary of Public Safety Clyde Cristman, and Felix Sarfo-Kantanka, special assistant to the Governor. At this meeting, VOP discussed both data collection and the proposed position at the Department of Criminal Justice Services. Randolph-Preston said, “VOP is certainly not going to ‘shut up’ on this issue. But we are looking forward to meeting with the State Police to discuss the data collection they have been doing, and to work with them on using this data for all Virginians.”

To get involved with VOP’s Racial Profiling Campaign, contact VOP staffers Larry Yates at (540) 436-3432 or llyates@shentel.net, or Richael Faithful at (703) 372-1470 or faithful@virginia-organizing.org.