France: Court Throws Out Cases Claiming Racial Profiling by Police
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Version 0 of 1. A court in Paris on Wednesday threw out lawsuits that claimed illegal racial profiling by the police engaged in public identity checks and pat-downs. The decisions will be appealed, said Lanna Hollo, a legal officer for the Open Society Justice Initiative, an advocacy organization that supported the lawsuits. In linked but separate civil cases, 13 black and Arab men requested 10,000 euros, about $13,600, in damages from the state after being stopped and in some cases frisked by the police; none of the stops were followed by further police action or charges. The court found that the men had been unable to prove racial motives for the identity checks, which are widely viewed in France as a legitimate policing tactic. A 2009 study conducted by French researchers and the Open Society Justice Initiative found that Arabs and blacks were as much as eight times more likely to be stopped than whites. |