The extremely wealthy Bay Area city of Atherton, Calif. ticketed 182 drivers for driving without a license or driving while under a suspended license from February to July 2013. Out of those, 175 had Hispanic last names, according to an analysis of Atherton's police blotter.

Kent Brewster, a front-end engineer for Pinterest, published his analysis on a website called "Profiling Atherton: The Dark Side To That Funny Little Police Blotter."

To Brewster, the data raised the following questions:

"Where are the non-Hispanic drivers? Are they all let off with warnings, or are they simply never pulled over in the first place?"

After talking to Atherton PD, however, we're not sure that there's any discrimination going on. [Note: This post has been updated to include comment and clarification from Atherton PD.]

The 185 tickets Brewster analyzed only represent 8% of all the citations the Atherton PD gave from February to July, Lt. Joe Wade told BI. In total, the Atherton PD issued 2317 tickets for a "variety of other vehicle code violations." Wade said that if you look at the bigger picture, Atherton does ticket its own residents.

"We don't have businesses in Atherton. We have schools and residences. Traffic control is our main concern ... Most people in Atherton just aren't driving without a license," Wade said.

As for Brewster's concerns about racial profiling, the police must have probable cause, such as speeding or a broken tail light, to pull someone over. It's possible that police stopped non-Hispanics just as often, but they simply had licenses. We can't know without the full data set.

We've asked the Atherton PD for this information and will update the post as neccesary.

Brewster also pointed out that the Atherton PD might be treating Hispanics more harshly. More than 100 of the people ticketed (mostly Hispanic) were charged with misdemeanors for driving without a license. L.A. attorney Steven Rodriguez' blog calls driving without a license a "woblette," meaning prosecutors have the choice to make the offense a misdemeanor or infraction.

Misdemeanors require booking, fingerprinting, and a mugshot and could land the offender 6 months in jail and a $100 fine.

This data appears among a slew of "first world problems" common in Atherton, according to Brewster. For instance (as highlighted by Gawker):