L.A. County Sheriff Alex Villanueva said he will revive a drug team that was sharply criticized for disproportionately stopping Latino drivers on the 5 Freeway but said the unit would follow strict constitutional guidelines to prevent racial profiling.
The Sheriff's Department's Domestic Highway Enforcement team's operations were suspended in November after the county's inspector general said it was “inherently built to violate the constitutional rights of a vast number of people passing through the I-5 Freeway.”
“Maybe they started with the best of intentions, but over time they got ... a profile that had too much of a component that was constitutionally impermissible,” Villanueva said. “So we need to restart and go back to what’s allowable.” The Times’ analysis of Sheriff’s Department data found that 69% of drivers stopped by the team were Latino and that two-thirds of them had their vehicles searched — a rate higher than motorists of other racial and ethnic groups. Cars belonging to all other drivers were searched less than half the time.
Interim L.A. County Inspector General Rodrigo Castro-Silva has said the department needs to craft clear guidelines on how the team conducts traffic stops and that the stops should be captured on video and audio.
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