Colorado launches effort to study racial profiling

Colorado lawmakers are starting to quantify the state’s racial profiling by law enforcement in the aftermath of high-profile clashes between the public and officers around the nation.

A committee of lawmakers on Tuesday had the first of several meetings they’ll hold by year’s end. The goal is to propose legislation on how to collect demographic data on arrests, stops, and searches to determine if there are troublesome trends.

Current state law bars police profiling based on race, ethnicity, age or gender.

But the American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado and Denver’s independent watchdog of the police department told lawmakers that the state lacks comprehensive data on how often profiling happens.

Any legislation the committee decides to introduce will happen at the begging of the next legislative session in January.