Apr 14, 2022 2 min read

For the second time in five years, state police have settled a lawsuit alleging racial profiling in traffic stops and unlawful immigration enforcement.

This week, Pennsylvania state police agreed to an $865,000 settlement regarding 10 traffic stops of Latino drivers for alleged traffic infractions, in which troopers then attempted to enforce civil immigration laws without jurisdiction.

In 2017, the PSP entered a $150,000 settlement with a Latino man who had filed a similar complaint.

The agency admitted no wrongdoing in the recent settlement but agreed to a policy precluding troopers from acting as immigration officers. The settlement is instructive because, for all of the common discourse about “illegal” immigrants, immigration most often is a matter of civil, rather than criminal, law.

Both settlements flowed from the PSP decision in 2012 to stop collecting racial profiling data. An independent study of pre-2012 data by researchers at the University of Cincinnati found no consistent evidence that troopers stopped drivers based on race, but that troopers were two to three times more likely to search Black or Hispanic drivers than white drivers. They also found that searches of white drivers were far more likely to yield illegal substances.

The agency has resumed data collection on its traffic stops. Gov. Tom Wolf should ensure that the data is used to ensure that state police react to conduct rather than appearances.