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Legislation and Litigation

Legislation

NORTH CAROLINA

Senate Bill 76 required state law enforcement agencies to collect data on the race of individuals stopped and required the Division of Criminal Statistics to correlate and analyze the data. Pending legislation would expand the data collection requirement to additional jurisdictions. There are at least two jurisdictions that are voluntarily collecting data at this time.

S.B. 960 (N.C. 2001), An Act to Require that Race-Specific Data Reporting be Accurate

Status: Enacted April 05, 2001 ; Effective July 01, 2001
all jurisdictions required to collect data

Other Information: All Departments of State and Local government that capture and maintain race-specific data by visual identification shall verify that information by asking the party.

Contact Information:

Senator Frank Ballance, Jr.
523 Legislative Office Building
Raleigh, NC 27601
919-715-3032

N.C. Sen. 76, 1999 Reg. Sess., codified as N.C. G.S. 114-10(2a) , To Require the Division of Criminal Statistics to Collect and Maintain Statistics on Traffic Law Enforcement

Status: Enacted April 14, 1999 ; Effective January 01, 2000
1 jurisdictions required to collect data: North Carolina Highway Patrol

Scope of Collection: vehicle stops

Restrictions: only statewide law enforcement agencies

Data Collection Dates: January 01, 2000

Data Collected: number of passengers, race, ethnicity, gender, age, location, warning given, citation given, personal search conducted, search of vehicle conducted, authority for search, arrest made, contraband found, items seized for forfeiture, physical resistance from driver, force used by officer, injuries, reason for stop / alleged violation

Other Information: Requires state-wide law enforcement agencies to collect data on the race of individuals stopped. Data already collected and analyzed indicate that the Highway Patrol and other state-wide law enforcement agencies are not targeting black and hispanic drivers in traffic stops. The data does indicate that black motorists are more likely to be searched given the disparity between the number of blacks searched and the percentage of blacks in the population of North Carolina.

Related Articles:

Journal Articles and Law Reviews:

North Carolina Highway Traffic Study
College of Humanities & Social Science, North Carolina State University

Contact Information:

Attorney General Roy Cooper
P.O. Box 629
Raleigh, NC 27602-0629
919-716-6400

N.C. Sen. 147, 2001 Reg. Sess. , An Act to Provide for the Collection of Traffic Law Enforcement Statistics on Stops Made By Certain Local Law Enforcement Agencies.

Status: Unenacted
number jurisdictions required to collect data: statewide law enforcement agencies, county sheriffs, county police departments, or departments in municipalities with population of 10,000 or more

Scope of Collection: vehicle stops

Restrictions: only certain law enforcement agencies

Data Collected: age, race, gender, ethnicity, number of passengers, reason for stop / alleged violation, location, warning given, citation given, arrest made, personal search conducted, search of vehicle conducted, contraband found, items seized for forfeiture, force used by officer, injuries, authority for search

Other Information: Provides for expansion of statewide collection efforts to include law enforcement officers employed by statewide law enforcement agencies, county sheriffs, county police departments, or departments in municipalities with population of 10,000 or more.

N.C. H. 425, 2001 Reg. Sess., An Act to Provide for the Collection of Traffic Law Enforcement Statistics on Stops Made By Certain local Law Enforcement Agencies.

Status: Unenacted
number jurisdictions required to collect data: Police departments in municipalities employing five or more full-time sworn officers for every 1,000 persons in the population.

Scope of Collection: vehicle stops

Restrictions: only certain law enforcement agencies

Other Information: Requires collection by law enforcement officers employed in police departments in municipalities employing five or more full-time sworn officers for every 1,000 persons in the population.

Contact Information:

Representative Alma Adams
542 Legislative Office Building
Raleigh, NC 27601-1096
919-733-5902
Almaa@ncleg.net

ANALYSIS OF RACIAL DISPARITIES IN THE NEW YORK CITY POLICE DEPARTMENT'S STOP, QUESTION, AND FRISK PRACTICES

RAND Corporation

In 2006, the New York City Police Department (NYPD) stopped a half-million pedestrians for suspected criminal involvement. Raw statistics for these encounters suggest large racial disparities — 89 percent of the stops involved nonwhites. Do these statistics point to racial bias in police officers’ decisions to stop particular pedestrians? Do they indicate that officers are particularly intrusive when stopping nonwhites? The NYPD asked the RAND Center on Quality Policing (CQP) to help it understand this issue and identify recommendations for addressing potential problems. CQP researchers analyzed data on all street encounters between NYPD officers and pedestrians in 2006. They compared the racial distribution of stops to external benchmarks, attempts to construct what the racial distribution of the stopped pedestrians would have been if officers’ stop decisions had been racially unbiased. Then they compared each officer’s stopping patterns with an internal benchmark constructed from stops in similar circumstances made by other officers. Finally, they examined stop outcomes, assessing whether stopped white and nonwhite suspects have different rates of frisk, search, use of force, and arrest. They found small racial differences in these rates and make communication, recordkeeping, and training recommendations to the NYPD for improving police-pedestrian interactions.

FLORIDA: JACKSONVILLE POLICE RECEIVE NO RACIAL PROFILING COMPLAINTS IN ’08

The Jacksonville Police Department presented its annual Racial Profiling Report which covers Calendar Year 2008 and showed that JPD received no formal reports of racial profiling. It also confirmed that local police are conducting traffic stops using legal criteria and not race as their motivation for enforcement action. Currently, the Texas Racial Profiling Law requires that police departments collect data pertaining to traffic stops, pedestrian stops, searches conducted and citations issued.

TEXAS: BELLAIRE MAYOR TO INVESTIGATE RACIAL PROFILING ALLEGATIONS

The mayor of Bellaire responded publicly for the first time to allegations of racial profiling due to an incident of mistaken identity. Officers will now be required to participate in additional cultural sensitivity training. The city is also hiring an independent state consultant to analyze traffic stop data for 2008 and look for incidents of racial profiling. The mayor also promised to release the results of the district attorney's investigation publicly, once it is completed.

CALIFORNIA: TORRANCE POLICE PROFILING SUIT IS DEFEATED

A woman who claimed she was wrongly arrested by Torrance police because of her race has lost her federal lawsuit against the city, a former chief and two officers. Sara Plowden, who lived in Gardena when she filed the civil rights lawsuit in January 2006, claimed she was subjected to a "driving while black" arrest early on Nov. 23, 2003. She claimed the officers physically accosted her and that city officials and former Police Chief James Herren allowed "an atmosphere of lawlessness, abuse and misconduct" to fester in the department.

ARKANSAS: ARIZONA DPS TIGHTENS SEARCH RULES TO AVOID PROFILING

The Arizona Department of Public Safety, in moves intended to prevent and detect racial profiling, is making internal changes that include requiring Highway Patrol officers to document why they search vehicles they stop. Other changes announced by Gov. Janet Napolitano's office include requiring officers to obtain a motorist's consent for a search to get the driver's signature or to use video or audio to record the driver giving permission verbally.

UTAH: UTAH HIGHWAY PATROL OFFICER ACCUSED OF RACIAL PROFILING

Sherida Felders, a black grandmother, alleges a Utah Highway Patrol officer had no reason to believe her Jeep Commander contained illegal substances, but called in a drug-sniffing dog after stopping her for speeding Felders has filed a suit accusing the trooper of conducting an illegal search of her vehicle for drugs based on racial profiling.