Spain’s Civil Rights Monitor Proposes Measures to Combat Police Ethnic Profiling

The Open Society Justice Initiative has welcomed a new initiative in Spain, launched by the country’s top monitor of fundamental rights and civil liberties, that aims to eliminate the ethnic and racial profiling of minorities by the Spanish police in supposedly random identity checks.

The recommendations from the office of the Defensora del Pueblo—directed to the General Directorate of Police at the Ministry of the Interior—represent the most comprehensive effort to date to address the issue of ethnic profiling on a national basis. If accepted and duly implemented, the proposals would enable the extent of the problem to be properly identified and addressed, while proposing measures to change police practices and culture. They include:

• Creating “stop forms” to be used by officers during each identity check for recording the ethnicity, race, and/or nationality of the person stopped in accordance to the principles of informed consent and confidentiality.
• Setting up a “statistical system to collect and monitor data disaggregated by race, ethnicity and/or nationality” in order to assess discriminatory policing.
• Specific training for officers on cultural diversity, and practical training on how to carry out identity checks in accordance with the principles of equality and nondiscrimination.
• The creation of a complaint mechanism to handle complaints from individuals who believe they have been subjected to discriminatory police  identity checks.

In 2012, the Ministry of the Interior responded to a previous statement of concern from the Defensora’s office by issuing operating guidelines that prohibit “the establishment of quotas for identification or detention of foreigners by any unit of the National Police, avoiding massive or indiscriminate actions based solely on ethnic criteria.”

The new, more specific recommendations now proposed by the Defensora del Pueblo reflect the failure of these operating guidelines to address the concerns of affected communities.

In December, 2012, for instance, the Madrid based monitoring group, Brigadas Vecinales de Observación de Derechos Humanos, reported receiving 255 complaints of discriminatory stops in the six months after the new police guidelines were introduced. Mutuma Ruteere, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on racism, racial discrimination and xenophobia, also called on Spain to do more to combat ethnic profiling by police following a visit to Spain in January.

The Open Society Justice Initiative believes that the adoption of these measures by Spain’s National Police would represent a significant step forward to ending discriminatory policing based on ethnic and racial criteria. These measures have already been adopted in other countries, as well as by the local police in the municipality of Fuenlabrada in the Madrid metropolitan area, where they have demonstrated a positive impact on preventing discriminatory police checks.

James A. Goldston, executive director of the Open Society Justice Initiative said: “Experience from across Europe shows that when appropriate measures are taken to reduce discriminatory policing, the result is an increase in law enforcement effectiveness, with better community-police relations, and improved trust in the police.”

In 2009, the United Nations Human Rights Committee called on Spain to take steps to eradicate police ethnic profiling, after finding in favor of a complaint from Rosalind Williams, a Spanish citizen of African-American ethnicity who was singled out for an identity check while travelling with her family by police looking for undocumented migrants.

The Open Society Justice Initiative, part of the Open Society Foundations, uses law to protect and empower people around the world. The work of the Justice Initiative includes litigation, research, advocacy, and technical assistance designed to eliminate discrimination and ethnic profiling by police in the United States and Europe.