One of the great debates about racial discrimination revolves around police and community relations and in particular racial profiling. In response to such concerns the federal government, and some state and local governments have started collecting data on police interaction with the public.
The Bureau of Justice Statistics has released the 2005 data on contacts between police and the public. Of particular, interest in the data on the racial make-up of police/public contact in traffic stops. The findings seem to be fairly consistent with past studies on racial differences in traffic stops. Here is a summary of from the AP:
Traffic stops are the most frequent way police interact with the public, accounting for 41 percent of all contacts. An estimated 17.8 million drivers were stopped in 2005.
Black, Hispanic and white motorists were equally likely to be pulled over by police — between 8 percent and 9 percent of each group. The slight decline in blacks pulled over — from 9.2 percent in 2002 to 8.1 percent in 2005 — was not statistically significant, Durose said, and could be the result of random differences.
The racial disparities showed up after that point:
_Blacks (9.5 percent) and Hispanics (8.8 percent) were much more likely to be searched than whites (3.6 percent). There were slight but statistically insignificant declines compared with the 2002 report in the percentages of blacks and Hispanics searched.
_Blacks (4.5 percent) were more than twice as likely as whites (2.1 percent) to be arrested. Hispanic drivers were arrested 3.1 percent of the time.
Among all police-public contacts, force was used 1.6 percent of the time. But blacks (4.4 percent) and Hispanics (2.3 percent) were more likely than whites (1.2 percent) to be subjected to force or the threat of force by police officers.
People interviewed described police hitting, kicking, pushing, grabbing, pointing a gun or spraying pepper spray at them or threatening to do so. More than four of five felt the force used was excessive, but there were no statistically significant racial disparities among the people who felt that way.
This does not deal with “stop and frisk” policies, only traffic stops, and since it is a nationwide survey, it would be difficult to see what municipalities exhibited the most and least discriminatory patters.
The stop and frisk issue is important in cities like New York where many people do not drive. The state Attorney General of New York released a report on stop and frisk searches. For those interesting in the racial aspects of stop and frisk data, you can check out this section of the report. The stop and frisk data is still contentious. Some worry about what is being done with personal information collected from stop and frisks, and others are concerned about delays in releasing information and the racial make-up of the people subjected to stop and frisks. (If you want to read a white racist justification for racial disparities in stop and frisks; go here.)
When you combine the data, the result do show greater scrutiny of people of color by police officers. However, that scrutiny doesn’t always occur in the ways that we expect. With the traffic stops, the greater scrutiny comes after the stop is made. The data on stop and frisks need a more thorough analysis that has a national level sample and more methodological sophistication before we can make find how and why racial disparities occur.
Note to commenters: This thread is not a thread for debating whether or not racism or racial profiling is real or whether or not blacks and Latinos are crime prone. Instead let’s focus on the kinds of methods that can be used to measure racial differences in police/public contact, and how we can assure that the criminal justice system treats all people fairly.
There are a lot of laws in place that aim to discourage or prevent discrimination.
What we need is mandatory reporting — the police need to be providing these statistics to the general public so the voters and federal agencies can decide if the local government is setting the proper policies.
I think the same thing is needed for other areas where anti-discrimination laws exist — public reporting would go a long ways to letting people know just how compliant different organizations are.
Furry’s right. We can’t even begin to figure out what if anything to do about all this until we have detailed, local data. Nationwide information is of almost no use in identifying and stopping abuses, because everyone always says, “oh it’s not happening here it’s those other guys.”
Well, I deal with this issue a lot. Just recently, in fact.
My city’s agency was required to provide data for race and gender on traffic stops, by area of the city and providing an analysis of the data on an annual basis albeit by a sociologist who was a former police officer. This was a required practice under the condition of a state consent decree after the state conducted a pattern and practice investigation and found among other things, that the traffic stops by officers were allegedly done in violation of state law.
The department said it would keep doing the studies after the decree but not too long ago, despite having budgeted the money to conduct it, changed its mind and will do one next year to cover a two to three year period. It’s been an issue I’ve been ahem, in discussion with the agency in the past few weeks, in part due to the large number of complaints coming in from Black and Latino residents in several areas of the city. But they don’t see any point in doing annual studies b/c in their eyes, the studies proved racial profiling didn’t happen when in actuality even their analyst of choice said that the studies didn’t prove it either way.
The studies the department did do showed much more scrutiny through searches of Black and Latino motorists with a higher percentage being searched, despite the fact that the discovery of contraband(be it weapons or drugs, for example) was at a lower percentile than that for White motorists. That was an area of concern that stood out but was never really addressed. Also the much higher no citation rates for African-Americans than Whites, done by officers in comparison to the higher search rate.
I think the arrest rates were fairly similar for all racial groups in terms of proportion with the respective population.
Force used in a stop wasn’t measured though it’s probably higher among Black people and possibly Latinos who probably have a lower threshold for triggering it in officers than Whites do.
One thing that should be addressed in studies involving individual law enforcement agencies are comparing vehicle stops done by patrol officers vs those done by traffic officers. Traffic officers are encharged to enforce traffic laws and to work towards maintaining an orderly flow of traffic on the streets whereas patrol officers are assigned to focus on other crimes and consequently are assigned the role of conducting what are known as pretext stops which are when officers pull a motorist over on a minor violation usually one they often don’t bother one because they feel they have probable cause to question the motorist and/or do a search of them or their vehicle. Most of the stops done by patrol officers are for this purpose.
Consequently, at least in my city’s studies, it was found that while African-Americans were slightly overrepresented in stops done by traffic officers than were Whites, the numbers became much more disproportionate when factoring in stops by patrol officers. When you average them together, the numbers seem lower than they really are, even considering the relatively smaller size of traffic units because traffic officers do more stops per officer than patrol officers do.
Whites are at the level or slightly underrepresented on traffic officers’ stops and much less proportionately represented on stops done by patrol officers.
I think studies done on this factor in other cities would likely show similar results.
Also, another tool might be to compare officers’ records for stops conducted within a neighborhood to see how they compare to one another. I don’t know if that’s ever been done.
Think there would be any way to take economic status out of it? I’ve noticed (not saying that this is representative) that the police are a lot harder on the poor than the middle class.
I have to blurt this out or I’ll explode.
When I was younger I drove red sports cars. Somehow, who knows, I managed to get all kinds of tickets, including one for 65 in a 55 when the traffic on LA 1 was barely moving 50 (it was Memorial Day weekend).
When I stopped driving red sports cars (now I drive one that’s silver and another that’s white) my tickets dropped.
To answer Joe’s comment, I don’t think the police have a clue who is rich or poor. I drive my cars until they drop — peeling clearcoat and all — and I’m not poor. Miserly with my daily driver, yes. Poor, not so much. That I’m white, female, not in a red sports car and not being pulled over tells me that if people of color (and people in red sports cars …) are getting pulled over often, the police aren’t paying attention to their radar guns or whatever. They are doing the lazy thing and profiling people.
I think poverty is actually quite important. It steps up in a number of ways.
First of all, police are less deferential and more aggressive to poor people, because the police believe (accurately) that there’s less they can do to make a fuss.
Second of all, poor people are more likely to commit the types of crimes that John Q. Educated Middleclass Public thinks of when he (always a “he”) thinks of “stopping crime.” That is NOT because poor people are criminals. It’s merely because the types of crime available to poor people are different. It’s hard to embezzle or commit tax fraud if you don’t have money. It’s hard to violate your fiduciary duties if you’re not a fiduciary.
Rich people and poor people steal; I believe the rates are pretty much the same. But if you were to ask most people to think of “stealing” they would imagine someone swiping a $30 shirt from a Wal-Mart (“poor people theft”). They wouldn’t think of an accountant at a big firm padding her bill by $30–though that’s stealing, too.
As a result, when people try to “fight crime” or “get more cops on the street” they are going for specific crimes. usually “poor people” crimes. They don’t think (or realize) that a single stockbroker can hurt society, or them, much more than a stolen orange.
Anyway, poverty is relevant because the types of crimes that are apparent in traffic stops and ordinary stops of the public tend to be the types of crimes which are disproportionately committed by poor people. If you replaced all traffic stops with IRS audits (yup, that’s stealing, too, and it’s mostly rich people who do it) then I suspect we’d find mostly rich white convicts.
Yeah, I agree with Sailorman on that. This also overlaps with race, since there are not many people of color in the upper class where white collar crime is the biggest problem.
I agree that it’s important to consider poverty. It’s also hard to measure because many pretext stops are based on “fix it” violations like broken tail lights as the means to conduct them. So if you’re poor and can’t do the repairs right away, then that puts you at higher risk of being pulled over if officers target you for a stop.
Though having heard stories of what happens when White motorists get pulled over for a broken tail light compared to what happens to a Black motorist, there’s still a big difference in how police officers treat them.
And what happens is that White motorists for the most part are pulled over for pretext stops(not traffic violation stops by traffic officers) in neighborhoods which are predominantly populated by people who are Black or Latino whereas Black and Latino motorists can be pulled over just about anywhere for a pretext stop. In their neighborhoods which police believe are crime-ridden and in White neighborhoods where they are not perceived as belonging in. Even wealthier and middle class Black motorists are pulled over in their neighborhoods because they are perceived to be driving a fancy car and living in a “nice” neighborhood because they are casing it for a burglary or other crime.
I talked to someone I knew who was in this situation and was stopped by police. Though the officer had told him it was a broken tail light when the officer had been heading towards them, turned immediately behind him and clearly was planning to stop him before he could even see the tail light. He knew that the police officer was wondering why a Black man was driving a nice car.
(If you want to read a white racist justification for racial disparities in stop and frisks; go here.)
Are you saying that the content of the linked article is racist, or that the author is known to be racist based on past writings?
It’s definitely true about red cars, especially sports cars, but any red car seems to push cop buttons. I think Consumer Reports did a study on it, I know someone did, and I think red cars are also more likely to be stolen. It’s also true about profiling: I once got off with a warning for 55 in a 35 zone because I was white, middle-aged, female, nicely dressed, and driving a nice family-type car, and because I groveled shamelessly.
Based on my own experience and that of people I know (entirely anecdotal, of course), cops definitely profile drivers both before and after stopping them. You’re less likely to get a ticket, much less arrested, if you have all those attributes I mentioned (except in Maine, where it seems to be better to be white and male: the cops apparently feel that if a man speeds, at least he knows what he’s doing). And of course we’ve all seen the news stories of pro sports players pulled over and/or arrested for nothing more than driving while black in a ritzy town, sometimes even after living there for years.
Better statistics and better breakdowns of statistics are sorely needed.
Rex,
I’m saying the article content is racist.
Before you go crazy, I know exactly where this is going. You don’t think the article was racist, so you want to have a debate about the content of the article. I’m not going to go for that.
Rather than being defensive, let’s focus on the parameters I set for the post.
Thanks, RS
Peace, Rachel. I wasn’t planning to have that debate; its content is entirely predictable (on both sides) and unproductive. I just wanted the one question answered, which you did. Thanks.
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