A question of profiling.

Byline: The Register-Guard

Decades of distrust and official inaction on the very real problem of racial profiling contributed to minority leaders' rejection this week of a Eugene Police Department investigation dismissing a young black man's allegations that he was stopped and questioned earlier this year because of his race.

The department may well have been justified in vindicating the police officer who stopped Cortez Jordan on the morning of Sept. 5 as he walked to his car from a nightclub with several white friends, none of whom were detained or questioned. But it's not hard to understand why National Association for the Advancement of Colored People officials and others are questioning the validity of the agency's internal review of the incident.

Local minorities have struggled for decades with scant success to get officials to seriously address the issue of profiling. Police chiefs and city administrators have made solemn pronouncements and even ordered study or two. But they have done troublingly little to halt the actual practice - and have exacerbated that failure by consistently rejecting specific minority complaints of profiling.

That profiling exists is beyond any reasonable doubt. Earlier this year, police released a two-year study of traffic stops showing that city police officers stop and search minority drivers more frequently than whites.

However, local minorities, especially young black and Latino men, don't need charts and graphs to convince them that profiling is real. They experience it on a disturbingly regular basis on the streets of this and other cities throughout this country.

Local minority leaders' rejection of the report's findings on Jordan's complaint also underscores the importance of expediting the sluggish process of reforming the department's flawed complaint and internal affairs system. To say this process lacks public credibility is an epic understatement, particularly in the wake of the convictions of two police officers for sex crimes and official misconduct.

An independent auditor's report earlier this year harshly criticized the department's internal investigations, citing their lack of reliability, timeliness, thoroughness and supervision. Although the department has made some significant improvements in the review process, its credibility with the public could hardly be lower.

The fundamental problem with the department's core review process remains that it's internal - police investigating police.

Even if the department does an exemplary job of reviewing allegations of officer misconduct, its findings, particularly those rejecting complaints, invariably will be regarded with suspicion by many in the general public.

In fairness, Chief Robert Lehner has taken significant preliminary steps to improve the complaint process. The department's release of its full report on Jordan's complaint marked a welcome departure from its long-standing practice of secrecy and silence. But the report - and minority leaders' reaction to it - underscore the need for a process that is even more transparent and that includes options for external investigations by an independent auditor and, possibly, a civilian panel.

Lehner should also continue discussions about racial profiling with minority leaders - and within his own department. Those talks should go beyond the question of technical legalities and deal with common-sense issues and perceptions. As Lane County Commissioner Bobby Green noted this week, police should not merely consider whether the decision to stop and question the only black man in a group of people in the Jordan case was legally defensible, but whether it was the sensible and "right" thing to do, as well.

Eugene police may have been exactly on target in clearing the officer involved in the Jordan case, and its investigation may been the very model of fairness and justice. But law enforcement officials still have a long, long way to go in building a solid foundation of trust and credibility with local minorities.