Study: DPS tickets Hispanics more often

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AUSTIN -- Texas state troopers were increasingly likely to issue traffic citations to Hispanic motorists while giving fewer to whites in the past six years, according to a study released by an immigration reform advocacy group Wednesday.

Published by Border Network for Human Rights, an advocacy and immigration reform group, the study of traffic citations and warnings issued by the Texas Department of Public Safety from 2009 to 2014 found that citations to Hispanics increased by 22 percent.

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Warnings to Hispanics were up 41 percent.

By comparison, citations issued to whites were down 24 percent and warnings were down 21 percent during the same period, according to the study.

Across the the state, Hispanics got more citations in 177 out of 253 counties and got warnings more often in 153 counties.

Texas has 254 counties. The study shows that Loving County, a sparsely populated West Texas destination, was not counted because its population is so tiny.

The study recommends that DPS reinforce its policies against racial profiling and improve its record-keeping to avoid ongoing issues with motorists' race or ethnicity being improperly recorded.

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DPS spokesman Tom Vinger said in an emailed response that the agency could not comment on the report until officials have had a chance to review it.

"What we can say is that we will continue to take our direction from the Texas leadership and Legislature regarding any need to alter the way the department operates," he said.

DPS Director Steve McCraw repeatedly has defended his agency, saying it does not engage in racial or ethnic profiling.

Last November, a study completed by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the University of Texas at Austin suggested that the way the agency keeps records about its arrests "makes it much harder for the agency to judge its performance around racial profiling."

"DPS compares the proportion of whites, blacks and Hispanics subject to traffic stops to the proportion of these groups in the statewide population," the study states. "It is highly unlikely that the proportion of blacks or Hispanics driving through the more rural regions that DPS patrols matches their proportions of the statewide population."