The same report also found that roughly 7 percent of traffic stops of black or Hispanic drivers resulted in arrests, compared with about 4 percent of the stops of white motorists. According to the data compiled by Hawley’s office, black and Hispanic drivers are searched more often than whites, and arrested more often as well.

“We know communities of color are overpoliced. That’s simply data,” Mittman said. “We know that we’ve been doing it wrong. Any attempt that doesn’t acknowledge that we’ve been doing it wrong is a step backwards.”

Comparing the effort to hot-spot policing, Adolphus Pruitt, head of the St. Louis NAACP, said there was a risk for higher incidents of racial profiling, though he agreed it was practical to have the Highway Patrol on the interstates.

“I’m not condoning it, I just expect it to happen,” Pruitt said.

Asked for comment on the concerns, Greitens’ spokesman Parker Briden pointed to a St. Louis Public Radio interview in which the governor said he was confident that the influx of state troopers in the city wouldn’t lead to an increase in racial profiling.