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Reports

The following are traffic and pedestrian stop data collection reports that have been released by different jurisdictions and community groups. These reports are sorted by date. To view reports by jurisdiction, go to the Jurisdictions Currently Collecting Data page and click on the relevant state.

Note: This section includes only reports analyzing actual data collected by law enforcement agencies. If you are looking for a report that outlines the process of data collection analysis, analyzes racial profiling concerns and challenges in a given jurisdiction, or involves a more general discussion of data collection issues, the report will be posted elsewhere on the site.

View year: 2001 2002 2003 2004 2006

New Jersey Consent Decree - Independent Monitor's Eleventh Report. December 20, 2004.
Oregon: Final Report on the Eugene Police Department's Vehicle Stop Data. Vikas Kumar Gumbhir. September 20, 2004.
"In response to the growing nationwide concern associated with "racial profiling", or "racially biased policing", the Eugene Police Department (EPD) voluntarily initiated a data collection program designed to gather vital statistics about vehicle stops conducted by its officers. The purpose of this study is to describe vehicle stops involving EPD officers, with a focus on identifying and discussing differences between racial/ethnic groups in terms of law enforcement practices."
California: Promoting Cooperative Strategies To Reduce Racial Profiling. "Oakland Police Department, RAND Corporation". July 19, 2004.
"The Oakland Police Department received a $200,000 grant from the US DOJ in order to take part in the COPS Promoting Cooperative Strategies To Reduce Racial Profiling program. The Department worked with the community to convene a Racial Profiling Task Force, which then decided upon the specifics of how to collect and analyze data in the city of Oakland. The data was collected by the Oakland Police Department and analyzed the the RAND Corporation."
2003 Annual Report Missouri Traffic Stops. Attorney General Jay Nixon. May 27, 2004.
Missouri state law requires law enforcement agencies to submit data to the Attorney General information on each traffic stop made. The 2003 Annual Report on Missouri Traffic Stops summarizes the data from 616 law enforcement agencies for 2003.
Massachusetts Racial and Gender Profiling Final Report. Amy Farrell, Jack McDevitt, Lisa Bailey, Carsten Andresen, Erica Pierce. May 04, 2004.
This study examines the existence of racial and gender disparities in approximately 1.6 million traffic citations and written warnings issued between April 1, 2001 and June 30, 2003, by the Massachusetts State Police, 340 municipal police departments and 25 other special police units. The Executive Summary of the Report contains an overview of relevant findings, and the contains more information about the data used in the Final Report.

Massachusetts Racial and Gender Profiling Report -- Executive Summary. Amy Farrell, Jack McDevitt, Lisa Bailey, Carsten Andresen, Erice Pierce. May 04, 2004.
Massachusetts Racial and Gender Profiling Technical Report. Amy Farrell, Jack McDevitt, Lisa Bailey, Carsten Andresen, Erica Pierce. May 04, 2004.
City of Prairie Village 2003 Bias-Based Policing Report. March 31, 2004.
Relies on the Driving Population Estimate model to formulate its comparative benchmark.
Pennsylvania: Project on Police-Citizen Contacts. "Robin Shepard Engel, Jennifer M. Calnon, Lin Liu, and Richard Johnson". February 02, 2004.
"The purpose of this data collection effort was to help the Pennsylvania State Police determine if there are racial and ethnic disparities in traffic stops and post-stop outcomes. The Pennsylvania State Police have a clear police prohibiting "biased-based" policing and voluntarily collected information to ensure this policy was being followed by troopers. To determine if racial disparities exist, data was collected during 327,120 traffic stops department-wdie from May 1, 2002 -- April 30, 2003. These traffic stop data were then compared with benchmarks created to approximate the "expected rates" of traffic stops for different racial and ethnic groups."
Michigan: Ann Arbor Police Department Traffic Stop Data Collection Methods and Analysis Study. Dr. John C. Lamberth, Lamberth Consulting. February 01, 2004.
Report for the city of Ann Arbor.
Kansas: A Multijurisdictional Assessment of Traffic Enforcement and Data Collection in Kansas. John C. Lamberth. February 01, 2004.
"The purpose of the study was to determine whether law enforcement agencies in the State of Kansas engage in racial profiling. The data was to come from existing law enforcement records, to the extent that those data were available. In order to meet these objectives, it was determined that ten agencies would be selected for inclusion in the study."
Texas: Racial Profiling: Texas Traffic Stops and Searches. Dwight Steward. February 01, 2004.
"With the passage of Texas Senate Bill 1074 (SB 1074) in 2001, law enforcement agencies must now annually report detailed statistics concerning the race of individuals who are stopped and searched in their jurisdictions. For this study, data from 413 agencies was collected. The dataset includes several millon police-civilian contacts representing the majority of traffic stops in Texas. This report analyzes each contributing agency's self-reported statistics, as well as the quality of the reports produced, in order to better inform policy leaders, law enforcement agencies, and community members as they address the problem and the perception of racial profiling. This is the largest set of racial profiling data that has ever been collected and analyzed."
Massachusetts Racial and Gender Profiling Study - Preliminary Tabulations Released. Northeastern University Institute of Race and Justice. January 20, 2004.
In 2000 the Massachusetts Legislature passed an act requiring all law enforcement officials in the Commonwealth to begin collecting data to assess the existence of racial and gender profiling with the overall aim of eliminating any instances of profiling.
An Empirical Investigation of the Possible Presence and Extent of Arbitrary Profiling in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department. William Smith. January 16, 2004.

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.