A federal jury ruled last week that State Police troopers at Logan International Airport unlawfully detained the coordinator of the American Civil Liberties Union's Campaign Against Racial Profiling while he was passing through the airport in the fall of 2003, attorneys on both sides said yesterday.
King Downing sued the Massachusetts Port Authority, which runs the airport, and State Police, alleging the troopers violated his constitutional rights by unreasonably stopping, questioning, and asking him for identification after he left the gate area. He had arrived in Boston to attend a meeting on racial profiling.
Downing, a Harvard-educated attorney who is black and has a beard, declined to provide his identification and was told to leave the airport. Shortly afterward, he was surrounded by several state troopers, who said they were arresting him for failing to show identification.
About 40 minutes later, the troopers released Downing after he showed them his driver's license and his airline ticket, which they had requested. They never filed charges.
In his lawsuit, Downing said he had been stopped because of his appearance. He also alleged the behavioral screening system at Logan encourages racial profiling. He sought unspecified damages and a ruling to declare the screening system unconstitutional.
The jury on Friday found Downing had been detained without reasonable suspicion. However, they did not find that he was stopped as a result of the Passenger Assessment Screening System.
The jury did not award Downing damages, but he is settling his complaint with William Thompson, the state trooper responsible for his detention, said Peter Krupp, a Boston attorney representing Downing.
"The settlement [with State Police] has not yet been finalized," Krupp said. "There will be a monetary award."
He would not say how much Downing had asked to be paid in the settlement. Thompson still worksat Logan.
Roscoe Trimmier Jr., the attorney who represented Massport, also declined to comment on the settlement.
Logan officials have said race played no role in the decision to question Downing. In court documents, they said the first trooper to ask him for identification [Thompson] is black, and three of the four officers who detained him also are black. They said the trooper became suspicious because Downing was watching him.
"Massport is gratified that the jury found correctly that the behavioral assessment screening system adopted by Massport and State Police in 2002 did not violate the plaintiff's rights and was not the cause of any injury that he might have suffered," Trimmier said.
Meanwhile, the ACLU plans to release a report today saying that the federal government's April report to the United Nations about racism in the United States was a "whitewash" that "swept under the rug the dramatic effects of widespread racial and ethnic discrimination in this country," and veils pervasive inequalities and continued racial profiling in Massachusetts and other states.
The ACLU report, "Race & Ethnicity in America: Turning a Blind Eye to Injustice," says racism in the United States remains "pervasive, institutionalized, systemic, and structural."
"The America we believe in is one where people are treated fairly, regardless of their race and ethnicity," said Nancy Murray, director of education at the ACLU of Massachusetts. "Unfortunately, as this report makes clear, the country and the Commonwealth are not living up to our ideals."
The ACLU says the government's report is "riddled with misrepresentations and inaccuracies and fails to honestly assess the ways in which racial and ethnic discrimination and inequality persist."
It cites inequality in education, employment, the treatment of immigrants, court proceedings, incarceration, and the death penalty.
In Massachusetts, the ACLU cites a 2004 study showing that racial disparities in traffic stops existed at 249 of the state's 341 police departments at the time.
Other evidence of discrimination, the report says, includes the number of minority juveniles arrested. In 2002, minority youths accounted for 25 percent of youth arrested and 63 percent of juveniles committed to secure facilities, according to the report.
Leslie Phillips, a State Department spokeswoman, declined to comment, saying she had not seen the report.
