Texas governor’s racial profiling remarks prompt criticism

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is facing criticism after responding to concerns about racial profiling along the border with Mexico by pointing to white drivers getting stopped in wealthy cities.

One police chief of an affluent neighborhood near Houston says Abbott wrongly suggested that most drivers stopped on his streets were white. More than half of the 2,000 drivers stopped by Memorial Village police in 2015 were minorities.

Abbott had said whites were pulled over in those communities not because they’re white, but because of strict policing. Garnet Coleman, a Democratic state lawmaker, says Abbott overlooks the bigger issue of what happens during a traffic stop.

Civil rights groups have accused state troopers along the border of harassing drivers. State officials have denied that.