“Your buddy’s giving me the idea that maybe he’s got a gun,” said Des Moines police Officer Kyle Thies. “That’s what I think.”

“How?” one of the men asked.

“I don’t know,” the officer said. “Just the way, I mean, just the way you’re holding yourself, man. That’s why we’re nervous, man. That’s it.”

Footage of this stop and search, captured on squad-car and body-camera video, has been viewed more than 10 million times since being posted online earlier this month. Thies told the driver, 23-year-old Montray Little, to step out of the car or go to jail. Little was handcuffed and questioned by Thies, while 21-year-old passenger Jared Clinton was questioned by Officer Natalie Heinemann. Despite Thies’ claiming he saw “shake” (marijuana) in the car, the search found nothing, and the two men were let go.

Now, Little and Clinton, who are black, have filed a lawsuit alleging racial profiling.

Sgt. Paul Parizek has said Thies made 253 arrests in 2017, and 50 percent of those arrested were black. Only 11 percent of the Des Moines population is black, according to census data.

It’s worth waiting to see the results of the incident’s lawsuit and ongoing investigation. But that racial profiling is a problem in Iowa is nothing new.

In 2015, Iowa City minority drivers were around twice as likely to be arrested during a traffic stop as white and Asian drivers, according to St. Ambrose University researchers. According to a brief by the Iowa-Nebraska Conference of the NAACP, in Linn County, black drivers are 25 percent more likely than white drivers to be cited rather than warned when stopped for a traffic violation. In Scott County, black drivers are 37 percent more likely to be stopped for traffic violations than white drivers and almost twice as likely to be arrested after a stop.

In addition to traffic-stop disparities, Iowa also disproportionately imprisons minorities. In 2016, Iowa had the fourth-highest incarceration rate for blacks, according to the Sentencing Project. At the time, blacks were imprisoned at 11 times the rate of whites. And despite research showing blacks and whites use marijuana at similar rates, blacks in Iowa are 8.3 times more likely than whites to be arrested for marijuana possession, according to the American Civil Liberties Union.

The NAACP and the ACLU of Iowa are pushing a bill introduced this year in the Iowa Senate that would prohibit racial-profiling. Iowa is one of 20 states that doesn’t have such a law. Civil-rights organizations have also asked Gov. Kim Reynolds to establish a racial profiling study committee. A spokeswoman for Reynolds said the committee is under consideration.

Efforts at the city and community level are important. The Iowa City police training on implicit bias has helped greatly decrease disproportionate minority contact. And the University of Iowa Department of Public Safety recently opened a similar program to the public.

But racial profiling must be addressed at the state level to protect all Iowans. Passing a law banning racial profiling and creating a committee to study the issue would be good first steps.

Conversations about race and policing often generate hostility. But it’s not anti-police to say that law enforcement officials are human beings, and therefore susceptible to the same biases as the rest of us. Ending systemic racial profiling will be a challenge. It’s time that our state at least tries.