Vehicle stop reports aim to prevent racial profiling

Statistics don't always indicate racial profiling, police say.

By Katherine Miller

Published March 5, 2009

Missouri police departments were required to send in their reports about vehicle stops to the attorney general's office March 1 in an effort to monitor and prevent racial profiling.

The vehicle stop report, released by Attorney General Chris Koster's office each year, requires officers to submit data including information about race for each driver they pull over, according to the attorney general's Web site.

"The responsibility for this project falls to the attorney general, and we will provide whatever information is required by law," Koster spokesman Travis Ford said.

The vehicle stop report law was enacted Aug. 28, 2000, after citizens and the state legislature expressed concerns about racial profiling, the Web site stated.

Ford said the information from hundreds of law enforcement agencies all over the state will be analyzed and released to the public June 1. Individual law enforcement agencies will then decide to take action if they discover a problem with their data.

In 2007, the attorney general reported that in Missouri, Caucasian people were pulled over slightly below the expected rate based on their fraction of the population, with a disparity index of .95. A disparity index relates each group's proportion of total vehicle stops to the proportion of the driving population older than 16. An index of 1 would show no discrepancy between stops and population.

Statewide, African Americans were pulled over 58 percent more often than what would be expected based on their population, the Web site stated.

Hispanic people had a disparity index of 1, and all other groups were stopped at a rate below their disparity index.

Boone County Sheriff Dwayne Carey said though the data might seem to reflect a problem of racial profiling, there are many factors that can skew the data.

The Boone County Sheriff's Department released its information about vehicle stops Feb. 27 in a news release.

Carey said the discrepancies in the numbers are usually caused by the demographics in the neighborhoods and locations they tend to police more. The demographics in those areas tend to differ from those in Boone County as a whole and often have a higher proportion of African Americans.

The sheriff's department had a 2.14 disparity index for African Americans in 2007.

Carey said the Sheriff's Department's made 896 more stops this year, which stems from a proactive policing system started after violent crime increased in December 2007.

The proactive approach involves dispatching two-officer teams to subdivisions where there are typically more crimes committed. Carey said these problematic areas are determined by past evidence of high call volumes and through drug intelligence.

"We have five or six problematic areas, and they're usually within the full circle of Columbia, right outside the city limits," Carey said. "We switched from a reactive law enforcement, responding to calls for service, to going out and actually trying to prevent those crimes from happening."

He said the officers who typically have a higher rate of vehicle stops involving African Americans tend to work in these high-crime areas.

"Our department will have officers that their numbers are high, but then you have to take into account, where's their assignment?" Carey said.

Carey said he has never seen problems with racial profiling since he became sheriff in 2005.

"Since I've been sheriff, I can count complaints of officers on both hands," Carey said.

Missouri State Highway Patrol Lt. John Hotz also said he hasn't seen problems of racial profiling at his department.

"This is something we take very seriously," Hotz said of racial profiling. "We train our employees every single year with these issues. Our job depends on the public trust, and this is obviously one area of concern that, when we deal with the public, is something we try to emphasize."

Columbia Police Department Interim Chief Tom Dresner said in an e-mail that the department is doing a comprehensive analysis about its racial profiling numbers and will release its data next week.