The biggest racial disparity in stops compared to local population was reported by the San Francisco Police Department. Slightly more than one in four of the nearly 55,000 stops the SFPD recorded in the second half of 2018 involved black individuals. The city's population is 5% black.
The SFPD did not respond immediately to a request for comment. The union for the department's rank-and-file members, the San Francisco Police Officers Association called the statistics the report uses "incomplete, skewed and inaccurate."
In a statement, SFPOA President Tony Montoya said that among other problems with the data, it "does not take into account the behavior observed by peace officers that justified each respective interaction or the specific locations where crime rates dictate a larger peace officer presence."
The other agencies that submitted data for the report were the California Highway Patrol, Los Angeles Police Department, Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, Riverside County Sheriff's Department, San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department, San Diego Police Department and San Diego County Sheriff's Department.
The San Jose and Oakland police departments, part of a group of the next seven-largest police agencies in the state, began collecting the state-required stop data in 2019 and must report to the state by April.
Among the other racial disparities identified in Thursday's report:
- Officers searched black individuals whom they stopped at a rate of 18.7%, some 2.9 times the rate at which they searched white individuals whom they stopped, 6.5%.
- The highest "yield rate" for searches — searches in which officers found illegal drugs, open containers of alcohol or other "contraband" — was for white individuals who had been stopped: 24.2%. Though black drivers were searched more often, the yield rate was lower, 22.5%.
- A lower percentage of black people (52%) than white people (60.7%) were subject to "enforcement actions" — citation or arrest — after a stop. But black people who were the subject of enforcement actions were more likely to be arrested, with 36.8% getting tickets and 15.2% taken into custody. Among white people, 49.4% were cited and 11.3% arrested.
State lawmakers who created the Racial and Identity Profiling Advisory Board hoped to learn if agencies are indeed more likely to stop minority motorists for what commonly has been called “driving while black.”
“This is a critical first step in the fight to end racial profiling,” said the board’s co-chair, Sahar Durali, who is associate director of litigation and policy at Neighborhood Legal Services of Los Angeles.
Public Policy Institute of California criminal justice researcher Magnus Lofstrom, who consulted with the board's researchers, said the racial disparity data “does not tell us the reasons behind those differences, and that’s where we need to go next.”
“At this point the analysis has not been done to answer those questions, whether it’s racial bias or there are other circumstances,” such as where the stops take place, Lofstrom said.
The board recommended the agencies refine their data collection; review and revise their policies and practices; and improve supervision and training. Board members called on legislators to provide more money for those purposes.
The state requires police to individually record the “perceived” race, gender and sexual orientation but it does not allow officers to confirm their impressions by questioning the person who was stopped.
“We’re trying to understand to what extent there might be racial bias. So we want to capture what the officer perceives the individual is,” Lofstrom said. “It’s the perception that I think is relevant if people have different experiences with law enforcement that are prejudicial.”
The board’s co-chairman, Kings County Sheriff Dave Robinson, said in a statement that the report “is just the beginning of information that will allow even greater transparency for law enforcement and our communities – allowing us to grow together working on local and statewide areas of concern.”
The CHP accounted for nearly 60% of stops, and the two Los Angeles agencies about 25%. The CHP and Los Angeles Sheriff's Department did not respond to requests for comment, but Los Angeles Police Chief Michel Moore told his department's Racial and Identity Profiling Act working group to review the report's findings and recommendations.
“It is our expectation that every contact with the public is conducted in a lawful and respectful manner, based on reasonable suspicion or consent regardless of race or ethnicity,” the LAPD said in a statement, noting that the racial disparities alone don't prove or disprove racial profiling.
Virtually all California police agencies will be required to collect stop data after Jan. 1, 2022.
This story was updated to add a comment from the San Francisco Police Officers Association.
This story includes reporting from The Associated Press.
