WASHINGTON (Reuters) – US Attorney General Eric Holder said yesterday he would soon release new guidelines to limit racial profiling by federal law enforcement, a move long awaited by civil rights advocates.
Holder announced his plan at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, where 1960s civil rights leader Dr Martin Luther King Jr preached. Holder’s comments came in the wake of unrest in Ferguson, Missouri, after a grand jury’s decision last week not to indict a white police officer in the killing of unarmed black teen Michael Brown.
Holder said he would announce the guidelines “in the coming days” as part of President Barack Obama’s response to the tension between law enforcement and minority communities that the events in Ferguson exposed.
The Bush administration outlawed racial profiling by federal law enforcement in 2003, but it applied only to national security cases and did not limit officers from discriminating based on factors apart from race, such as national origin, religion or sexual orientation.
Civil rights advocates have long called on the federal government to expand the guidelines. It is not known what groups Holder will include.
