ACLU calls for ‘urgent and drastic’ changes for Riverside County DA’s ‘racist’ policies

The ACLU of Southern California is calling for "urgent and drastic" changes at the Riverside County District Attorney's office, and alleging "racist and unjust" policies in a new report.

The report says that while just more than 7 percent of Riverside County's population is black, the number of black adults charged by the DA's office in recent years was nearly double that: almost 14 percent.

Click here for the full ACLU report. Click here for a summary of the ACLU report.

The ACLU recommends the DA's office commit to "blind charging," which the organization said prevents prosecutors from seeing demographic information before making an initial decision whether to charge someone with a crime.

Luis Nolasco, senior policy advocate with ACLU of Southern California said a majority, 57 percent, of charges filed from 2017 to 2020 were for low-level offenses he said would be better solved with community resources.

"[Riverside County] needs more community resources, we need more mental health support, we need more programs," Nolasco said. "We don't need more incarcerations."

The District Attorney's office is responding in a statement to News Channel 3, calling the ACLU report "disingenuous" and "inaccurate."

A spokesman said the DA's office adopted blind charging in January 2020, and also engaged in an independent third party data audit that revealed in "early reports" that cases are filed at a "standard and equal rate between White, Black, and Hispanic suspects."

"It is easy to falsely attribute differences in charging practices to race instead of other obvious contributing factors present in the offense itself or the prior criminal history of the individual," the statement said in part. "To do otherwise is a dishonest exercise set up to ensure inaccurate statistics in support of a preconceived narrative.”

The full District Attorney's office statement is below.