RAND CorporationIn 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.
Juana Villegas, who is nine months pregnant, was arrested for driving without a valid license. Villegas believes she was a victim of racial profiling. During the traffic stop, Villegas was able to produce a valid vehicle registration and consulate photo identification: two documents that should have averted an arrest. Villegas was jailed for about a week.
For the eighth year in a row, the Barry County Sheriff's Department and all six area police departments have submitted traffic stop data for the Missouri Attorney General's 2007 Missouri Vehicle Stops annual report. The report collects data from law enforcement agencies throughout the state and summarizes it to track racial profiling trends. The reporting of this data is mandated under a state law that was enacted in August of 2000 to address allegations of racial profiling by law enforcement officials. Click
here for access to the full report
The New York Civil Liberties Union has been granted access to the New York Police Department’s internal database to search for racial bias in stop-and-frisks. The police department argued that releasing access to the database would pose a risk to police officers as their personal information is contained in the database, however the judge ruled that such information could be blacked out.
In an effort to track instances of people being pulled over by the police on the basis of race, The Colorado Progressive Coalition has started a statewide hotline for racial profiling. Beginning in April 2008, the hotline has received 70 calls statewide so far. Most callers are of Latino and African-American descent.
At a panel discussion at the Clark County Public Library, residents were urged to file a report if they believe officers acted unjustly toward them. Neither Springfield Police nor the Clark County Sheriff's Office have had many complaints about racial profiling in the last few years. Clark County Sheriff Gene Kelly and Springfield Police Division Chief Stephen Moody said their departments routinely undergo training to learn to deal with the issue appropriately.
