Statistics, which come from largest-ever dataset compiled about US police stops, lend support to minority groups who have long complained about biased policing

Black people in California were stopped by police officers much more frequently than other racial groups in 2018, and police were more likely to use force against them, new statistics from eight large law enforcement agencies in the state reveal.

Twenty eight per cent of all persons stopped by Los Angeles police officers during the last six months of 2018 were black, while black people account for just 9% of the city’s population, the data shows. In San Francisco, the black population has shrunk over several decades to just 5% of the city’s total population, but 26% of all stops carried out by the SFPD from July through December of 2018 were of black people – marking the widest racial disparity in police stops of the eight reporting agencies.

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According to the new data, black people are much more likely to have firearms pointed at them by police officers. They also are more likely to be detained, handcuffed and searched. At the same time, when the police search black, Latino and Native American people, they are less likely to find drugs, weapons or other contraband compared to when they search white people.

The stark findings are based on an analysis of records of 1.8 million people stopped by the eight largest police agencies in California in 2018. The data was collected by each police agency and provided to the California Department of Justice under a 2015 state law that mandates efforts to eliminate racial profiling by law enforcement.

The racial disparities revealed in the new statistics reflect the findings of older studies about racial profiling in US police departments that were based on smaller, less-detailed data sets. But California’s new numbers make up the largest-ever dataset compiled about police stops in the US, and they lend considerable support to minority groups who have long complained about biased policing.

In Los Angeles, “black people in particular, and Latinos, are fearful of the police and are constantly having their dignity compromised by unwarranted stops and searches”, said Alberto Retana, the CEO of the Community Coalition of Los Angeles, one of the groups in a new coalition seeking to eliminate racial profiling called Push LA.

Los Angeles police are continuing to use aggressive tactics in black and Latino neighborhoods, Retana said, even though violent crime rates in the city have dropped to historic lows.

Bryant Mangum said he has been pulled over by the LAPD approximately 30 times over the past couple years. The father of three lives in South Central Los Angeles and works in a warehouse. He also runs a startup that helps elderly people take trash out of their houses to the curb, and he is on the board of a not-for-profit that helps parolees start their own businesses.

Still, Mangum, who is black, feels harassed by the police.

“At night it never fails, I don’t get a ticket or explanation,” said Mangum. “They pull me out of the car, I’m handcuffed, and they search my car, for I don’t know what.”

A longstanding problem

The 2018 police data included numbers from the Los Angeles, San Diego and San Francisco police departments, the Los Angeles sheriff’s department, Riverside county sheriff’s department, San Bernardino county sheriff’s department, San Diego county sheriff’s department and the California Highway Patrol.

Seven additional medium-sized California departments are currently collecting stop data and will submit it for analysis next year. By 2022, every police force and sheriff’s office in the state will be gathering and reporting stop data, providing the first ever view of an entire state’s police interactions with the public.

The findings for Los Angeles come after one particular police unit, Metropolitan Division, faced intense scrutiny over an LA Times investigation that showed that about half the people stopped by its officers were black. Although the data examined by the Times couldn’t prove bias, the sheer scale of the disparity was enough to cause LAPD’s chief to order the unit to draw back on random vehicle stops.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Los Angeles police department gang unit officers stop and frisk someone in the Rampart district of Los Angeles, California, 5 August 2006. Photograph: Robert Nickelsberg/Getty Images

For the city of San Diego, the 2018 data showed that black people accounted for 19% of all stops by the San Diego police last year even though only 6% of the city’s population is black. Black people were 25% more likely to be searched, 8% more likely to be arrested without a warrant and 59% more likely to have force used against them during a stop, according to an analysis by the advocacy organization Campaign Zero.

In San Francisco, SFPD now stops black people at rates over five times their representation in the city’s overall population, according to the 2018 data.

The disparity is a significant increase since the 1990s, when activists in northern California urged the San Francisco police to reduce the disproportionate numbers of black and Latino people stopped by police in the city. In 2002, the ACLU of Northern California accused the San Francisco police of being “in denial” over racial profiling after a study showed that black people were pulled over by the SFPD “at rates over twice their representation in the population”.

In San Diego, black people were 25% more likely to be searched, 8% more likely to be arrested without a warrant and 59% more likely to have force used against them during a stop

In 2016, following a scandal involving at least 14 SFPD officers who exchanged racist, homophobic and transphobic text messages, the San Francisco district attorney convened a Blue Ribbon Panel of experts to propose reforms. The panel’s final report found that SFPD officers more frequently asked black and Latino people for permission to search them compared to whites, even though white people who were searched were more likely to have contraband on them.

Numerous individuals have accused the SFPD of racially biased policing, including a 2018 lawsuit brought by people arrested in a 2013-2014 narcotics sting operation. The plaintiffs in the case allege that SFPD officers targeted only black people and ignored drug sales conducted by people of other races.

SFPD did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

‘A remarkable opportunity’

Law enforcement groups opposed the Racial and Identity Profiling Act of 2015, which mandated the collection of the stop data and established the Ripa Board. The California State Sheriffs’ Association argued that collecting the data is burdensome for officers and detracts from their ability to fight crime. Between 1997 and 2006, five similar bills that would have mandated stop data collection or prescribed racial bias training for police officers were vetoed or killed in the legislature following police union lobbying.

But advocates and policymakers have heralded the collection and disclosure of the statistics, while academics, community groups and police are being encouraged to drill into the data to better understand disparities in policing.

“It’s an ambitious and cutting-edge effort,” said Andrea Guererro, the executive director of the Alliance San Diego, a community organization. Guerrero serves on the Racial and Identity Profiling Advisory Board, which was created in 2015 by the state legislature to oversee California’s stop data collection and analysis effort.

“We’ve long had concerns about racial profiling and bias in policing here in San Diego county,” Guerrero said. “The data is helpful to us, as it is across the state, in validating those concerns.”

“As in other parts of the state, black San Diegans are being stopped and searched at higher rates, even though recovery of contraband is at much lower rates compared to white San Diegans.”

But how to use California’s new stop data going forward remains a contentious issue.

At a 20 November meeting in Oakland, Ripa board members debated the different methodologies for analyzing the new data for the board’s 2020 annual report.

The King county sheriff, David Robinson, and the Morgan Hill police chief, David Swing, advocated for employing a method that compares stops at night versus daytime. The “veil of darkness” often shows that black people are more likely to be stopped at night than white people, a possible indication that racially biased policing isn’t influencing who is pulled over because officers are less likely to be able to see a person’s race in the dark.

“I like the veil of darkness,” Robinson said at the meeting. “It just gives us another piece of the puzzle.”

Other board members argued against including the veil of darkness method in the Ripa board’s report, saying the assumption that officers can’t see a driver’s race at night isn’t accurate, and that there are other reasons stops of black people might increase at night.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest In San Francisco, police now stop black people at rates over five times their representation in the city’s overall population, according to 2018 data. Photograph: Alamy

Matthew Ross, a research assistant professor at New York University who studies police stop data in other states, said there is no one best method of analysis.

“The whole issue of racial profiling is nuanced and there’s things the data can’t tell you,” Ross said. “But it can show you where to extend those resources for a deeper dive.”

Ross credited the veil of darkness method for overcoming previous limits of other analyses, but he said it has its own flaws. One possible reason police pull fewer black people over during the day is that black people are aware of their racial visibility in daylight, therefore they overcompensate and drive more carefully giving police fewer opportunities to stop them.

Another possible reason is that police resources are redeployed when the sun goes down, said Ross, concentrating officers in predominantly black and Latino neighborhoods.

In Connecticut, where a similar state board is gathering and analyzing stop data, Ross said one recent debate between police and community advocates about how stop data should be interpreted concerned stops of motorists that ended with only a warning given by an officer.

“If you have a higher rate of warnings for minority motorists, to the policing community it means they’re giving people breaks,” said Ross. “But to advocates, it means you’re stopping minorities and looking for reasons to search them.”

Advocates in California say they welcome the opportunity to discuss racial disparities in policing with the new data, complexity and all.

“I think the data presents a remarkable opportunity for police departments across the state to reduce their racist practices,” said Retana, the CEO of the Community Coalition of Los Angeles.

“People usually use data against us,” he added. “Now is the time to use it in the people’s interests.”