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Spotlight

The following are past spotlights on various aspects of the data collection process.

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• Institute on Race and Justice and Lamberth Consulting Release Resource Guides on Racial Profiling. December 01, 2005.
  The Institute on Race and Justice at Northeastern University and Lamberth Consulting are pleased to announce the release to two new manuscripts designed to provide law enforcement and community stakeholders resources to understand and address racial profiling.
  
  The first publication Learning from Research and Practice is designed for researchers and practitioners who want to gain a complete understanding of the best practices for traffic and pedestrian stop data in order to address questions of racial profiling.
  
  

  The second publication, A Practitioner Guide for Addressing Racial Profiling is intended to be practical, not theoretical. The Practitioner Guide provides reader with a concise and straightforward overview of how other agencies have approached racial profiling, and directs researchers to additional reference information for the areas presented.

• Guide for Analyzing Race Data From Vehicle Stops. Lorie Fridell. July 05, 2005.
  The Police Executive Research Forum has completed By the Numbers: A Guide for Analyzing Race Data from Vehicle Stops. The final version (with three new chapters) are available for free from the PERF web site. By the Numbers is a detailed "how to" guide for analyzing race data from vehicle stops. It provides a social science framework for understanding the challenges of trying to measure racial bias in policing and presents an array of methods for law enforcement professionals, researchers and other stakeholders to consider when interpreting the vehicle-stop data. The primary audience for this technical guide includes the people who will actually be conducting the analyses, though police professionals at all levels, policy makers and others have much to gain by reading the preliminary and final chapters. Following these introductory chapters, By the Numbers provides step-by-step guidance for implementing various benchmarking methods. Forthcoming is a shorter document entitled "Understanding Race Data from Vehicle Stops: A Stakeholder's Guide" which will target policy makers and other concerned stakeholders and highlight the key themes of By the Numbers.
• Florida: Miami Dade Police Department Racial Profiling Study. The Alpert Group. May 27, 2005.
  The Miami Dade Police Department recently released a study detailing the results of the analysis of traffic stop data. The Alpert Group was commissioned by the Miami-Dade PD to conduct a study to identify whether or not the MDPD officers were “systematically using race to make decisions to stop and search a citizen.”

  This report is one of the most comprehensive traffic stop reports to date. The Alpert Group worked with an advisory board that was comprised of community leaders as well as criminal justice scholars. Working alongside the advisory board allowed for researchers to address community concerns and to create an officer/citizen contact form that gathered information necessary for the study.

  A copy of the full report is available here.

• Massachusetts: Massachusetts Racial Profiling Data Collection Comments & Suggestions. April 07, 2005.
  The Executive Office of Public Safety for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts has been working with Northeastern University's Institute on Race & Justice to collect and analyze gender and racial profiling traffic stop data. In addition to the report released in May 2004, EOPS has also instituted a racial profiling hotline for reporting traffic stop incidents. The Executive Office of Public Safety has recently opened a comment period for the public to share their comments and suggestions on the Massachusetts traffic stop data collection form. All comments and suggestions must be received by May 1, 2005 at 5:00 PM. To share your ideas with EOPS, please click here. You may also view a copy of the Massachusetts data collection form here.
• National Symposium on Racial Profiling. April 06, 2005.
  Northwestern University Center for Public Safety is holding the fourth annual National Symposium on Racial Profiling. The three day even runs from April 24 - 27, 2005. A wide range of topics will be covered, including unique experiences from State Police representatives from all over the country. The emphasis on this symposium is to examine how traffic stop data can be analyzed and used to improve policing, with emphasis on what communities expect after data has been collected. Specific racial profiling experiences from various police departments will be highlighted by their respective chiefs of police. To get more information or to register for the symposium, please click here.
• NEW! INTERACTIVE REPORT GENERATOR. January 31, 2005.
  The Racial Profiling Data Collection Resource Center is pleased to announce a new feature of the website. An interactive report generator has been added to the Reporting & Analysis section. The generator contains the most comprehensive information on traffic stop reports to date. This new utility now allows users to quickly generate customized tables that display easy to read data extracted from various traffic stop study reports. The generator provides users with easily accessible and stream- lined data from these reports, as well as the ability to access individual reports from within the data table. Click here to access the report generator!

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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.