Esserman, Fernandez: New data’s concerning.
Black motorists are almost three times as likely as white motorists to get stopped and searched by a cop in New Haven — even though they’re far less likely to have drugs or guns in the car.
That finding emerged in a new study of traffic-stop data by The New York Times.
The Times found the same dynamic in studying police departments across the country, as the news organization reported in this article. The findings fuel an ongoing national debate over how cops interact with black citizens, and offer a reality check for New Haven’s community policing effort.
“We need to study this data and learn from it,” New Haven Police Chief Dean Esserman said.
NYT
The Times’ study, which drew on Connecticut traffic-stop reporting mandated by a state racial-profiling law, covered the period from December 2013 through August 2015. New Haven police stopped and searched either the cars or persons of black drivers 2.9 times more often than the cars or persons of white drivers — yet found contraband only 0.6 times as often. The numbers were even more extreme in Torrington and Chicago. (See chart.)
It’s the most recent study to highlight the problem now based on new data-collection and reporting requirements passed by the state legislature in 2012. At the time the legislature updated the the Alvin W. Penn Racial Profiling Prohibition Act to require more in-depth data analysis by local departments to be forwarded to the state.
The study updates a report released this past April by the Connecticut Racial Profiling Prohibition Project. That report documented widespread disparities in racial stops in departments throughout Connecticut, based on an analysis of 620,000 stops statewide between Oct. 1, 2013, and Sept. 30, 2014. You can find that report here.)
Besides finding a clear racial disparity, the April report, entitled Veil of Darkness, concluded that the disparity is greatest during daylight hours, “when motorist race and ethnicity is visible.” Unlike the Times report, it did not single out New Haven.
Allan Appel Photo
“This should concern all of us,” Henry Fernandez of Fair Haven, who studies and writes about civil rights and municipal polices as a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, stated in reference to the Times report.
“This kind of research is only possible because NHPD is really working hard now to collect and make available meaningful data. For years, NHPD did not have the infrastructure to report basic crime stats to the FBI. We should all feel good about police transparency,” argued Fernandez, who also has worked with New Haven teens as the executive director of LEAP (where he’s pictured in the above photo). “My experience working with teenagers in New Haven is that their perceptions of police vary significantly. Those that have had negative interactions with a police officer often carry negative views of all police for a long time. Similarly those who have been helped by an officer have much more favorable impressions of police – and even consider becoming officers.
“If we want to have effective community policing, no part of our community can feel that it is targeted for unwarranted enforcement.”
Fernandez called on police to “look at why this is happening” and on activists and elected officials to “make policy changes.” “Given what we now know from these stats, let’s put to rest forever any idea that racial profiling works.”
Deeper Analysis Sought
Officer James Baker, president of an organization of African-American New Haven cops called the Guardians, questioned whether the statistics prove that the city has a racial profiling problem.
“It’s not really profiling,” Baker argued. “It just appears to be. That’s who lives in the city. They are more comfortable driving in the city.” More black motorists mean more stops of more black motorists, he said.
New Haven police Sgt. Shafiq Abdussabur (pictured) — an activist and author of A Black Man’s Guide to Law Enforcement in America who deals regularly with policing and race on his WNHH radio show— agreed that the situation is more complicated than the data suggest.
For instance, he said, it should be broken down to where specifically the traffic stops occurred — and what else was happening in that neighborhood at the time of the stops (for instance a crime wave or special suppression effort in, say, Newhallville in response to a string of crimes).
On the one hand, law enforcement should seek to address the new data, Abdussabur said. “I don’t ever think it’s OK when any particular population seems to be exposed to criminal justice at a disparate rate.
On the other hand, he said, cops are facing countervailing pressures from elected officials in black and Latino communities: “You have black elected officials saying, ‘The cops are sitting in the car doing nothing. We want the cops to do more.’ Where are the cops going to do more? In their community.” In addition, Abdussabur observed, officers in New Haven and nationwide have sometimes being reluctant to police proactively now because of racial protests. “You don’t do enforcement in that community in that particular community where crime is happening, you get like Baltimore After Freddie Gray died: You have the highest crime rate in 40 years. Officers are going to stay in the car and do nothing.”
More Training Sought
Looking forward, the ACLU of Connecticut is recommending that departments beef up “bias-free police training, better community dialogues,” and continual monitoring of the data on traffic stops, said Communications Director Patrick Gallahue.
“We have measured the scale of the problem very well in Connecticut very well. We need to take action now to bring those numbers down,” Gallahue said.
Assistant Police Chief Luiz Casanova, who previously oversaw patrol and now has taken command of training and internal affairs at the New Haven department, said he does plan to take a close look at the issue. “We’re not going to tolerate people being stopped just because of their ethnicity or their race,” Casanova said. He promised to look at additional ways to train officers in the matter as the department proceeds with “rebuilding the academy from the ground up.”
Abdussabur argued that cops need much more training focused specifically how to deal with black and Latino citizens, of all ages.