The release of a city-commissioned study on racial profiling in San Diego police traffic stops has been delayed an additional four months.

The review by San Diego State University was launched after 2014 traffic stop data for the city indicated Hispanic and black drivers were pulled over and searched at rates higher than their shares of the driving-aged population.

SDSU was tapped to do a fuller examination of the data, which was to be ready in November 2015 and then June 2016. Now release has been pushed to October.

One reason: Work on the study started before a city contract was in place, and then paused while a contract was finalized.


“How does this happen? I got my frustration out then,” said Councilwoman Marti Emerald, who pushed for the study. “At this point I’m probably more curious than I am frustrated. We’re all waiting.”

The contract, according to a copy obtained under the California Public Records Act, was signed in January 2016 by SDSU representatives and in April 2016 by city officials.

It calls for researchers to complete the report by Oct. 5 and to present the findings at a City Council public safety meeting on Oct. 26. The analysis will now include 2015 data as well as the 2014 data originally under scrutiny.

“We hope that there are no further delays as this is important information for the community and department to have to address concerns around practices that unfairly criminalize communities of color,” said Christie Hill, senior policy strategist for the American Civil Liberties Union San Diego.


The police department has been collecting data on traffic stops since January 2000, according to the department’s website, in order to monitor for racial profiling, or the use of race or ethnicity as a factor in suspecting someone of an offense.

San Diego was the first big city in the country to voluntarily gather and analyze this data, according to a Northeastern University report commissioned by the U.S. Department of Justice.

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In February 2015, the police department published the traffic stop data for first time in more than a decade.


“I was concerned about that data because it showed if you’re a person of color in the northern part of the city, you’re much more likely to be stopped than someone who’s not a person of color. There were individual pieces that were disturbing,” Emerald said. “Since then, I know that the chief has implemented the cameras, has brought in community resource officers, has addressed recommendations about police and citizen relations, and we are seeing a drop in complaints to the community police review board.”

According to the 2014 data:

Hispanics made up 27.0 percent of the driving-age population, 30.2 percent of drivers pulled over, 40 percent of drivers searched and 34.7 percent of traffic stop arrests.

White drivers’ pull-over rate, at 43.0 percent, was lower than the group’s share of the driving-age population, 47.2 percent. White drivers, at 39.8 percent, made up the largest portion of people arrested as a result of the stops.

Blacks made up 5.5 percent of the driving-age population and 11.2 percent of traffic stops.

The police department’s report, as it had in the early 2000s, hesitated to draw conclusions from the data about racial profiling. The report cautioned that it is difficult to know for sure the actual driving population of each group. It cited San Diego’s daily border traffic, booming tourism and military presence as factors that make the actual driving population different from the residential population old enough to drive.

SDSU researchers hope to eliminate this uncertainty by analyzing stop data during daylight and at night with the assumption that police would not be able to tell the driver’s race at night prior to making a stop, according to the contract.


The SDSU researchers will also analyze search and arrest data and interview both community members and police officers.