The state Department of Public Safety has adopted a series of changes that will fundamentally alter the way officers gain consent to search vehicles following the recommendations of an advisory board composed of Arizona residents appointed by Gov. Janet Napolitano.

The most significant changes require officers to receive a signed form before a driver consents to a search and for officers to document, what factors, exactly, prompted the search for those cars and trucks where a search proves fruitless.

Many of the recommendations have already been put in place, said Mikel Longman, Chief of the Agency's Support Division.

It's part of the agency's ongoing effort to achieve a greater sense of transparency following a 2003 court settlement, Longman said.

�I think actually it will be very beneficial,� he said. �It's really been quite enlightening for me on things as a longtime police officer that may appear to be abundantly obvious.�

As part of the court settlement, Napolitano appointed a nine residents to a Citizen's Traffic Stop Advisory Board which spent the last 19 months gathering information from local-and-national experts on traffic stops and racial profiling and collaborating an the recommendations released Tuesday.

The new policies require the driver to consent to the search- either in writing or on video-or-audio tape- and for the officers to fill out a form that DPS supervisors can review to determine the cause of the suspicion.

If the driver refuses, an officer can try to get a warrant, which requires probable cause, a higher standard than reasonable suspicion that criminal activity might be present, said Jean-Jacques Cabou, a Phoenix attorney and member of the advisory board.

The resulting changes, with DPS officers receiving written consent and detailing the roots of their suspicions, puts the department in a unique position, he said.

�I don't believe that the DPS will be the first law enforcement agency ever to take these steps but they are certainly one of the first to adopt what we believe are best practices in this area,� Cabou said. It's a step advocates have been waiting for since the beginning of the decade, when ACLU representatives filed a class-action lawsuit on behalf of citizens who alleged that DPS officers stopped-and-detained minority drivers at a higher rate than White drivers.

Following the court's decision, the agency began voluntarily collecting data on everyone DPS officers stopped in Arizona, but in some regard that data has proven inadequate.

The results of that data collection- released in a comprehensive report updated last month-showed that Hispanic motorists were more likely to be ticketed than other motorists and less likely to receive warnings for infractions.

The data, collected in 2007 by a team of experts from the University of Cincinnati Policing Institute, also showed that �Hispanic, Native American and Black drivers were all significantly more likely than White drivers to be arrested and searched,� and mirrored the findings from 2006.

But study noted that it was impossible to determine whether race was a motivating factor in pulling over a car or truck on one of Arizona's highways.

�We can't get past the fact that Arizona is one of the major trans-shipment states in elicit narcotics coming into the U.S., illegal aliens coming into the U.S. and cash and weapons going into Mexico,� Longman said. �DPS officers are trying to work their best to make the highways inhospitable to the criminal element.�

The policy changes represent another step in that data-gathering, Longman said, and an effort on the part of DPS get have more pertinent information while allowing supervisors to track the consent searches.

But Daniel Pochoda, an ACLU lawyer, said the study's results proved DPS had done little to change the culture in the department despite the lawsuit.

�There has not been a willingness to acknowledge the results and the behavior are racially motivated, to admit there's a clear statistical discrepancy,� Pochoda said. �To not say there's not a problem with some racially motivated police behavior, whether it's conscious or unconscious, I think it's less likely they'll constructively address it.�

The study's authors also noted that without a benchmark to determine the expected racial breakdown of motorists traveling through a certain area, the data's ability to help demonstrate bias was limited.

The new recommendations bring with them more data collection for DPS officers, and with it the possibility of getting to the root of that racial disparity and restoring more public confidence in the agency, said Liz Archuletta, a Coconino County Supervisor and board member.

�I think it provides not only protection for the officers but for the person being stopped,� she said.

The policy changes, while significant, are just the first phase, board members said.

The governor-appointed board is slated to meet again in February.