Profiling allegations probed

RALEIGH, N.C. -- The Alamance County Sheriff's Office is the latest North Carolina law enforcement agency to face scrutiny over racial profiling accusations, as the U.S. Department of Justice launches a probe into whether it has illegally targeted Latinos.

The Associated Press obtained a letter sent to county officials this week from Judy Preston, acting chief of the Special Litigation Section of the department's Civil Rights Division. It says the agency will be looking into unspecified allegations of "discriminatory policing and unconstitutional searches and seizures."

A department spokesman said Friday that letter refers to accusations of racial profiling aimed at Latinos.

Officials in Alamance County, located between Chapel Hill and Greensboro, say they're confident the investigation will exonerate the sheriff's office.

"I don't think there's any profiling from the sheriff's office," said Linda Massey, chairwoman of the Alamance County Board of Commissioners.

"I went through two checkpoints myself not long ago," she said. "I don't have a problem with it, because I'm not here illegally."

A call to Sheriff Terry Johnson was not immediately returned on Friday.

Massey said the American Civil Liberties Union of North Carolina reviewed thousands of pages of documents provided by the sheriff's office last year and didn't accuse the agency of racial profiling.

Katy Parker, legal director of the state ACLU chapter, said Friday that's because her group is still reviewing the material. The ACLU is concerned that Latinos are being targeted by police in Alamance County, she said.

Parker said there appears to be a large number of arrests of Latinos on charges such as driving without a license or driving with a suspended license, but not coupled with other charges.

"When you see arrests for those kinds of things, it begs the question of why they were pulled over in the first place," she said.

Although Alamance is the only department in the state being investigated for racial profiling by the federal government, other law enforcement agencies in North Carolina have come under scrutiny.

On Friday, the Southern Poverty Law Center sent a letter to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, asking for the termination of an immigration law enforcement agreement it has with the Mecklenburg County Sheriff's Office.

The agreement allows deputies to put suspected illegal immigrants into deportation proceedings after they're arrested on other charges. Mecklenburg deputies have placed more than 7,700 illegal immigrants into removal proceedings since the department joined the program in 2006.

The SPLC, a national civil rights advocacy group, says in the letter that the county sheriff's office "has shown brazen lack of regard for the civil rights of its community members."

Julia Rush, a spokeswoman for the sheriff's office, said the agency is satisfied with the way it's participated in the program.

"We believe the program has saved lives and has been successful," she said.

Accusations of racial profiling have also touched municipal departments. In April, three state civil rights groups announced their own inquiry into charges that police in the Wake County town of Zebulon have been illegally targeting members of a Latino church for traffic stops.

The developments all point to the need for comprehensive changes to U.S. immigration law, said Pablo Escobar, a member of El Pueblo, an advocacy group.

"What's the root cause of the problem?" he asked. "It's a broken immigration system."