LVPD's racial profiling hits close to home

by Jaclyn Roco
Arts & Entertainment Editor

I was waiting for my boyfriend to pick me up from my dorm room. It took hours for him to come and soon enough I started to worry.

Did he get hurt? Was he dead? Did he crash? I paced the floors, the walls and the tables of my dorm floor, agonizing over what possibly could have happened to him. I started to sweat and blame myself for asking him to come over. (I mean to have someone get hurt on your behalf? How awful!)

Finally after three hours of worrying and tearing my hair out of my head, I heard a wee knock on my window. I jumped out of my bed and opened the curtain. And there he was!

"Where the hell were you?" I asked, not bothering to let him in.

"Just let me in," he said tiredly.

I finally noticed the defeated and confused look he had on in his face, and I relented.

"Well?" I asked, my hands on my hips.

He soon started to tell me this ridiculous story about how the La Verne police pulled him over because he looked "suspicious."

How, may I ask, does a preppy looking Asian guy look suspicious? Is it because he is Asian? I did not believe him, (I thought he had just taken his time in coming over), until he held up his hands. Sure enough there were red circle marks over his wrists. He then told me that not only had he gotten pulled over, he had been asked to step out of his vehicle with his hands over his head while the two police officers asked to search his car.

Because my boyfriend is so well versed in his rights, (his mom is a district attorney for Los Angeles), he asked them on what grounds they had the right to do so, even while they proceeded to handcuff him.

The officers said they thought him suspicious because a robbery had occurred and the suspect's car was silver.

A silver what? Just because he drives a silver, Honda Civic with a body kit doesn't mean he's a gangster or anything. My boyfriend asked for a supervisor to talk to afterward, who kindly explained to him that he was free to go.

I think it's sad that this incident had to happen in the first place. My boyfriend did not have to get profiled for driving a "silver" car no more than anyone else who drives any other similar color car for that matter. Or was it only that it was such a late hour in the night that made him look more suspicious? Was it the way he was driving? Was it the way his eyes turned up at the ends when they asked him to roll down his window?

The supervisor even explained to him that La Verne did not need the trouble that L.A. has. What's that supposed to mean? And more to the point, was my boyfriend being racially profiled in an area that was predominantly Caucasian?

He told me that he was lucky to have known his rights, otherwise the police would have found some way to hold him longer. And I'm sure they would have too, because right when we left my room, I saw the cops he pointed out to me pulling over a black car--a black car, not silver! --and out stepped a young African American.

But maybe it was just too much of a coincidence. Perhaps he was driving too fast. I wonder if anyone else out in this school has been through a similar experience. If many other experiences have occurred, than most likely the La Verne police is making assumptions that outsiders are not welcome here. It's just too bad then that the University of La Verne welcomes diversity.

Jaclyn Roco, a junior journalism major, is arts and entertainment editor of the Campus Times. She can be reached by e-mail at rocojax@yahoo.com.