"Almost every Latino has a story to tell, either their own or a friend's, about being inexplicably stopped and detained by the police for no reason other than 'Driving While Black or Brown," said Michelle Alexander, Director of the ACLU-NC's Racial Justice Project. "Spanish-speaking drivers are also more likely to suffer other violations of their rights once they are stopped by police. Letting these racist police practices continue unchallenged, only creates fear and distrust of law enforcement in Latino communities."

To publicize the hotline, the ACLU has launched a radio ad and billboard campaign, designed and supported by HeadQuarters Advertising, Inc. Billboards are posted on major city streets in San Francisco and the East Bay. The billboard states, "!@%*&! Otra vez me paró la policía por ser latino...llegando llamaré a los de ACLU: 1-877-PÁRALOS." (The list of billboard locations is attached.) The three-week radio campaign is airing on radio stations in northern California and the central valley. The billboards and radio ads encourage people who have experienced race-based stops to call the ACLU hotline. The ACLU-NC will compile these experiences to support SB 78, legislation that would track race-based stops by California's law enforcement officers, and to educate the public about racial profiling in routine traffic stops. In one Oakland incident, Lorelie Suarez, a young Hispanic woman who works as a Human Resources Coordinator was stopped by the police in her friend's driveway and cited for a "rolling stop." Thinking that to sign a citation was to admit guilt, Suarez refused to sign the citation, and then the officer started yelling and became very hostile. "It was almost as if the officer snapped, he slapped a handcuff on me and pulled me out of the truck, tearing the skin on my wrist," Suarez said. "There was absolutely no reason for the officer to get so intimidating and hostile, we were not threatening him at all." Suarez was charged with resisting arrest and detained for 6 1/2 hours in a holding cell. Later the District Attorney's office dropped the charges and Suarez never received a citation for the rolling stop.

The ACLU-NC has also received reports of race-based police stops of Latinos in the Central Valley. "These kind of stops happen all the time here," said Francisco Duarte, pastor of Presbyterian congregations in Corcoran and Fresno. "Many people in my congregations, including my two sons, have been stopped simply because they are Latino. When one of my sons was stopped, he showed the officer his college ID. The officer said to him, 'Is this real or is this fake?' He treated my son with no respect." The Spanish radio ad was created pro bono by HeadQuarters Advertising, Inc., an independent Hispanic-advertising agency based in San Francisco. In the ad, two men are talking about life in the United States.

Rodrigo: ?Qué te pasa?
Juan: Ya estoy hasta el copete.
Rodrigo: ?Algo con la familia, la chamba?
Juan: No, hombre, la familia y la chamba están bien. Lo que ya no soporto es lo de la policía, mano.
Rodrigo: ?La policía?
Juan: Pues sí. Otra vez me paró la policía. Me pidió los papeles, me interrogó como si fuera un criminal...
Rodrigo: ...y resulta que el œnico crimen que cometiste es ser latino. Sí, me la sé de memoria. Pero tœ puedes hacer algo al respecto, Juan.
Juan: ?Estás loco? Se trata de la policía, Rodrigo, con ellos no hay quién que pueda.
Rodrigo: Solos, no, pero unidos sí podemos. Mira, lo primero que tienes que hacer es llamar a la Unión Americana de Derechos Civiles al 1-877-PÁRALOS...

In response to mounting criticism of discriminatory police practices nationwide, on April 14, Representative John Conyers, D-Michigan, reintroduced the "Traffic Stops Statistics Act" to study the issue on a national level. Sponsors cite strong anecdotal evidence that racial profiling is a problem countrywide. An ACLU study, based on court-imposed monitoring of the Maryland State Police stops on I-95, showed that although African American drivers were 72% of those pulled over, they were only 14 % of the drivers.

Spokespersons are available to be interviewed in Spanish.
Radio ad tapes and billboard designs in Spanish are also available.