http://www.sunherald.com/mld/sunherald/12838799.htm

Posted on Fri, Oct. 07, 2005

Is this law enforcement or profiling?
Singled-out Latinos wonder
By TRACY DASH and JOSHUA NORMAN
SUN HERALD

LONG BEACH - When 20 law enforcement officers went to a Red Cross shelter in Long Beach last week and asked for identification for many of the people there, officers said they were responding to complaints.

But people who run the shelter and the people living there said it is peculiar that the only people officers asked for identification were Latinos.

There are at least three versions of what happened Sept. 28 at the American Red Cross shelter at the West Harrison Civic Center on Espy Avenue.

The Harrison County Sheriff's Department said it went to the shelter, at the request of Red Cross shelter officials, to help protect the safety of shelter residents. Red Cross officials staffing the shelter, however, said they were surprised officers showed up. Latinos said they were singled out.

Shelter Manager Scott Steiner was standing in the kitchen around 8 p.m. that night when he saw flashing lights through the window. He said to his surprise he discovered several police officers rounding up Latinos, about 50 in all, in the corner of the parking lot.

About the same time, Aaron Gonzalez said he walked through the front door of the shelter to take a shower and was grabbed firmly by an officer. Gonzalez, a tough-looking young man with tattoos and angular facial features, said the officer demanded his Social Security card and driver's license, and then radioed in his name to see if he had any outstanding warrants.

Jose Luis Rubera, a friend and occasional co-worker of Gonzalez, said while he was being lined up and told to remove his shirt along with dozens of other Latino men, "an officer said he was looking for child molesters."

Assistant shelter manager Mark Dragovich returned to the shelter from doing outreach work shortly after officers arrived. He said an officer told him they were responding to a 911 call involving looting in a nearby neighborhood with a Hispanic suspect and that they had told the men to remove their shirts because the looter had a distinguishing tattoo.

Capt. Windy Swetman, a Sheriff's Department spokesman who was not on the scene, said he wasn't aware of a report of looting.

Sheriff George H. Payne Jr. said name of one of the men appeared on the National Crime Information Center database. He said it would not be uncommon for police to ask someone to remove their shirt if the NCIC showed the person had a distinguishing mark, such as a tattoo.

Payne said deputies learned the name on the NCIC was not the same person at the shelter. No one was arrested.

Swetman and Capt. Tony Sauro, who coordinates multi-agency law enforcement efforts post-Katrina, said deputies were responding to complaints by shelter officials who had left prior to Sept. 28. They said the complaints involved incidents with drinking and drugs in tents outside the shelter, where most Latinos were staying.

Steiner and Dragovich acknowledge there had been problems in the tents outside the shelter, but deny making the 911 call that precipitated that incident. After the visit by officers, Red Cross officials decided to disallow all tent use outside the shelter.

Vidala Leal-Rodas said her husband, who is from Mexico and has fair skin and sandy-blond hair but speaks little to no English, was not lined up or questioned despite walking right by a group of officers while the incident was taking place.

According to Red Cross officials and several witnesses, the officers gave the group three options after their records and papers were checked: Get on a bus to Houston, Atlanta or Mexico.

Steiner said he and his coworkers came up with a fourth option: Call the many contractors who employ the men and see if space for their tents could be set up either on a business site or in other places.

Nearly all the men were able to find contractors to take them in. As a result, none of the workers got on a bus, Steiner said.

Sauro said deputies planned to help relocate the men if they had family in other states. He said they soon learned the men in tents didn't want to leave; they were in town to work.

Rubera said he had been living and working in Pass Christian for nearly five years. Although there were at least a dozen people or families who showed up after the storm looking for work, Rubera said most had been established in the community and they all worked together.

The Red Cross welcomes anyone who says they've been displaced by a disaster and they need shelter, said spokeswoman Mary Lee Conwell.

She said if there were people in the shelter who were not displaced because of Katrina, they now understand they are not supposed to stay there.

"We were not sure how many of them were displaced South Mississippians or were they contract workers just coming in here and using these Red Cross shelters as base camps," Swetman said.

Payne vehemently denies the officers threatened deportation.

"For them to turn it around and make it something evil when it was something good, that is disgusting to me."

While the Latinos at the shelter claim they were singled out, authorities deny any prejudice.

"We in law enforcement cannot help what perceptions people have," Sauro said. "We in law enforcement can only be sensitive to their perceptions. That's why we went in there with no (U.S.) Border Patrol, no immigration (officials)."