32 Comments - bored now - Wednesday, Jul 5, 06 @ 6:17 am: that’s sad… [thanks for the 4th of july piece!] - Wumpus aka Todd Jong Il - Wednesday, Jul 5, 06 @ 6:23 am: Is there additional data? Perhaps why minority drivers were pulled over? This is useless without data. One can say minorities break the law more or that all police are card carrying klan members. - OAD - Wednesday, Jul 5, 06 @ 6:31 am: “Police searches also were more common for minorities. The analysis shows 2.1 percent of minority drivers allowed police to search their car, compared with less than 1 percent of white drivers.” This is all the article says. The supporting stat doesn’t, of itself, indicate that more minorities are being searched or that a stop will lead to a search - just that they are more likely to permit a search. I’d like to see the stats on how many were asked to begin with. - Leroy - Wednesday, Jul 5, 06 @ 6:55 am: This is temporary. ‘Roadside Safety Checkpoints’ and ‘Seat Belt Enforcement Zones’ are springing up all over northern Illinois. I saw multiple ones over the holiday week and weekend. Within two years, the percentage of minorities being pulled over will regress back to the mean, as far more non-minorities are pulled over to compensate. And we’ll all be safer because of this. - OAD - Wednesday, Jul 5, 06 @ 6:59 am: The actual release is here. It does break down the reason for the stop, ie moving/ equipment/ tag violations. http://www.dot.state.il.us/trafficstop/2005summary.pdf The Consent Search stat is actually .74 white to 2.1 non-white. - Dr. Yan - Wednesday, Jul 5, 06 @ 7:57 am: Has anyone commissioned a study to see if minorities break the law more often, than non-minoirites, or if they are worse drivers, which might cause them to be stopped? - OAD - Wednesday, Jul 5, 06 @ 8:14 am: That summary I linked to above? The total in the table at the bottom is incorrect. They threw out the ‘not specified’ race. (781) - North of I-80 - Wednesday, Jul 5, 06 @ 8:32 am: None of these surveys consider the race of the police officer making the stop: if minority officers stop and ticket minority drivers, then these officers are suggested to be Klan members? If the percentage of tickets issued / drivers searched is supposed to match the racial composite of Illinois, then we need to match the racial composite for Everything: the percentage of black/white/hispanic players in the NBA has to match the polulation also. The same for percentage of racial mix receiving welfare or free government services has to match the racial mix of the state; can’t have too many whites or blacks or yellows or blues receiving more than their fair share of anything…. right? - ron - Wednesday, Jul 5, 06 @ 8:41 am: sounds like someone complaining about something that is not a big deal. how many drivers under age 25 stopped versus drivers age 55 and over? how many drivers are stopped with cars that don’t operate properly, which could be the reason they were stopped in the first place. maybe minority car owners have cars in worse condition. anyone can come up with lots of statistics, if they are trying to prove their viewpoint. - L's, D.L.'s & Stats - Wednesday, Jul 5, 06 @ 8:45 am: I’m not sure this study is all that illuminating. For instance, the statement that “minorities are more likely to recieve a ticket” worries me. Could it be that some police officers are nervous about racial profiling claims and only stop minorities for more serious violations? I would like to know the average speed that white drivers recieve citations versus the average speed for a specific group, such as African Americans. And as far as searches, why does the study only publish results of “consent” based searches? Do the police collect data on “probable cause” based searches and is there a difference between the races? - Robbie - Wednesday, Jul 5, 06 @ 9:16 am: I feel that in order for these statistics to be indicative of anything, there would need to be a much larger gap in the numbers. For the reasons stated by previous posters, the statistics may be entirely justifiable. Having heard all the rhetoric about this issue for the past several years, I honestly felt there would be a much larger disparity. I think at least for our state, we might be making a mountain out of a molehill. - Anon - Wednesday, Jul 5, 06 @ 9:39 am: To those interested, read “The Myth of Racial Profiling” by east coast scholar Heather McDonald. The article is a few years old, but still timely. http://www.city-journal.org/html/11_2_the_myth.html - Try this on for size - Wednesday, Jul 5, 06 @ 9:59 am: You are a new police chief in a medium sized Midwest town. Your town can basically be divided into thirds: One third is mostly businesses, a shopping, restaurant and nightclub area. Calls your department receives are for disturbances at bars, thefts and other minor events. The second third is mostly middle and upper class residences. Calls volume here is low, mostly domestic disputes, neighbor complaints and an occasional “serious” call. Most residents here are employed, have high school education and can afford a well maintained and insured vehicle. The population make up is 80% white, 20% minority. The third section of town is a bit rougher. The residents are poorer and have less education. This is where the majority of calls come in from. There are shootings and drugs and alcoholism are much more prevalent. Because many of these residents never graduated from high school, they never completed drivers’ ed. And never got a drivers license. They then get revoked because they get caught driving without a drivers license. Their vehicle is in poorer condition because they can’t afford to fix it or get a “nice” new car. Many can’t afford to pay for insurance. The racial makeup of that area is 80% minority, 20% white. You have received many complaints from residents in this neighborhood about criminal activity and those residents and the local newspaper have roasted your department for not doing enough to “clean up” this part of town. You have about ten officers per shift to work with. After great study of where you receive calls from, you assign two officers to the business area, two to the middle/upper class area and the remaining six to the poorer neighborhood where your highest call volume is. Your most senior patrolmen, some nearing retirement, opt to work the residential and business areas by seniority, since those areas are “quieter” and for them, the fun of foot pursuits, gun and drug calls and high stress police work is now long gone. They tend to not make traffic stops very often, preferring to “keep things quiet”. Your youngest, most aggressive officers, many of them minority officers themselves, are assigned to the “rough” third of town A year goes by. The results of the new racial profiling study are released. The results are “disturbing” because most of your officers, especially the young, aggressive ones who are still trying to change the world are working in the high crime area and are stopping mostly minority drivers, who are as we alluded to above, less likely to have drivers licenses, insurance and vehicles in good repair. As police chief, please respond to the city council, the news paper and the same community leaders that wanted you in the high crime area about why you are leading a police department that is “obviously, statistically and inherently racist in it’s policing techniques”. - Big Al - Wednesday, Jul 5, 06 @ 10:07 am: i’m curious to know the most recent skew in this statistic the increased State police patrols on the Dan Ryan Expressway. Was the increase in patrols and speed trap wagons there to increase revenues for the State or further perpetuate the reasons for the current statistics. - VanillaMan - Wednesday, Jul 5, 06 @ 10:21 am: I know this happens. It’s unfair. I am stereotyped all the time, as are you. If you drive a red Corvette, you will be stopped more often than if you drive a white Corvette. If you drive a pick-up truck, you will be pulled over in Lake Bluff more often than if you drive a Audi. If hip-hoppers drove gray mini-vans with no bling, they would be pulled over less often than their friends in their blinged-out 300s. When I was in Japan, I was stopped repeatedly because I was too tall, too blonde, and too caucasian for crowds. Yup, it’s unfair. My law enforcement friends risk their lives daily for our safety. I want them to stay alive, and I respect their experiences. I don’t stand over their shoulder and cluck each time they make a decision. They are out there, not me or you - how about a little respect? We need to stop obsessing over “fairness” and start living in the real world. - Big Al - Wednesday, Jul 5, 06 @ 10:24 am: I’ll bet the reason was neither- I’ll bet the Dan Ryan had the highest rate of personal injury and fatal crashes or maybe highest average speed. Maybe all three. Would you research that and get back to us? Bet you don’t do it! - Sammy Esposito - Wednesday, Jul 5, 06 @ 10:51 am: Actually, I am surprised by the numbers. “…minorities made up 28.5 percent of the driving population but accounted for 31.8 percent of traffic stops in 2005.” I thought the disparity would be much higher than that. Minorities are more likely to be driving in high crime areas — where there are more police on patrol and more traffic stops made. Additionally, statistically speaking, minorities are more likely to be poor, which means they are more likely to drive old cars with broken tail lights, expired plate tags, etc. Which again, would make them more likely to get pulled over. Add to that equation some good old fashion racism, and 31.8 percent seems low. Maybe police officers around the state, (knowning these stats are being kept,) have been careful not to target minorities. Or maybe racial profiling isn’t as bad as we thought. Then again, racial profiling can be a two-way street. Say you’re a Chicago cop on the West Side and you see a late model car, with a Schaumburg city sticker, filled with white kids, come off the Eisenhower. The car circles around the block a couple of times near an open-air drug market. What do you do? If you don’t find an excuse to pull that car over, you have no business being a police officer. - Yellow Dog Democrat - Wednesday, Jul 5, 06 @ 1:29 pm: Not surprisingly, there’s once again an outpouring of obfuscation regarding this report. The statewide statistics are misleading. Racial profiling is not a statewide problem, it is an agency by agency problem, related to the bad behavior of a few rogue individuals at the very least, or poor training and improper departmental policies at the very most. Looking at the statewide summary allows those bad apples to hide behind the vast majority of individuals that are doing their jobs abd doing them well. For example, according to the complete report, the Effingham County Sherriff’s department is 5.76 times more likely to stop minority drivers. The City of Champaign is 1.63 times more likely to stop minority drivers, Decatur 2.11, Springfield 2.13, Bloomington 1.63. Compare that to Chicago, 1.14 and Illinois State Police, .89. I agree with the Illinois State Police that interpreting these numbers requires context, and I hope the legislative black caucus will organize hearings in Springfield and in these and other “hot spots” around Illinois to find out just exactly what is going on. - Yellow Dog Democrat - Wednesday, Jul 5, 06 @ 1:45 pm: VanillaMan - Let me get this straight: Ron argues that blacks are getting stopped more often because their cars are crappy, and you’re arguing that blacks are stopped more often because their cars are too new? Sounds like the Redneck Party has it’s bases covered. I say bullcrap to your hands-off argument. Our military does not operate without civilian oversite, and neither do our police. Last time I checked, we lived in a free country that allowed free travel. There shouldn’t be two speed limits: one for white people, one for everbody else. I understand the irrationale of the minority stops. Cops are looking for drugs. They think minorities are more likely to have drugs, so they pull them over more frequently, ask them more questions, apply more pressure to get consent for a search. BTW, in case you don’t know, the request for a search usually goes like this: “We’ve been on the look-out for explosives and guns since Sept. 11th. You don’t have any guns or explosives in your vehicle, do you?” “Do you mind if we take a quick look, just to make sure?” Of course, they aren’t looking for a dirty bomb. They’re looking for enough drugs or cash to justify seizing your vehicle. This is a civil rights problem, but it’s also a law enforcement problem. That’s because FBI data shows that the majority of people busted with drugs in traffic stops aren’t minority, they’re white. Of course, if your name was ChocolateMan instead of VanillaMan, you’d probably see things more like me. - VanillaMan - Wednesday, Jul 5, 06 @ 2:48 pm: If I saw things your way I’d be as confused as you are too. - Larry Horse - Wednesday, Jul 5, 06 @ 3:17 pm: The difference in search rates is not racist if a similar percentage of those who are searched actually have something illegal in their car. Also, 60% vs. 69% doesn’t necessarily seem high enough to suggest blatant profiling. - ron - Wednesday, Jul 5, 06 @ 4:09 pm: yellow dog democrat you are again trying to play the race card when one does not exist. is there bigotry? yes, but it cuts both ways with bigotry on the part of some whites, democrats included, and some minorities. do minority officers stop more whites or minorities? is stoppoing a rampant and grave problem. no. ask me to due a study to prove a conclusion and i can give you all the scientific data you need to support it. sounds like you have been stopped yellow dog. don’t call me a redneck party, when the democrats have controlled the major metro area police dempartments for decades. crime is still higher there. always looking for excuses and using the race card, instead of dealing the the real issues and solutions. democrats like you are hypocrits. - Woe is us - Wednesday, Jul 5, 06 @ 4:10 pm: Looks like most posters don’t believe that racial profiling exists. If these same posters were polled, I’d bet that most are non-minorities living in segregated communities who have no idea what it’s like to be pulled over for a D.U.B. (Driving while black/brown). - Gish - Wednesday, Jul 5, 06 @ 4:36 pm: Last time I checked, we lived in a free country that allowed free travel. There shouldn’t be two speed limits: one for white people, one for everbody else. YDD is correct here. Utilizing the summary data, whites are stopped for moving violations about 5% more often than are their minority counterparts. Why is the ‘apparent’ speed limit lower for whites than the minorities? Limit the data to larger cities and you’ll find the percentage difference increases to closer to 10%. Damnable bigotry in all its forms. - Gregor - Wednesday, Jul 5, 06 @ 5:30 pm: While I think mister “try it” lays out a plausible argument for 90 percent of this, I think some folks ARE stopped for what some of the comedians describe as “driving while black”. My feeling is that cops have agendas like any other human being, and they may or may not decide to use additional psychological pressure on certain types of people under certain circumstances. In their minds I think they feel justified, because in THEIR experiences, profiles actually DO fit most of the time. - A copper myself - Wednesday, Jul 5, 06 @ 6:03 pm: I am a police officer assigned to traffic patrol and have been so for almost 16 years. I have worked all across the northern part of the state fom east to west and a little bit in the central part of the state. In those many years of being involved in thousands upon thousands of traffic stops, I have NEVER encountered an officer that I would describe as a racist, even thogh some of you pointy headed experts are quick to drop that label on individual officers and departments. All of us are experts on policing, after all we have all witnessed a bunch of it on T.V., right? It never ends to annoy me that people think so little about calling cops racist. Most are exceptional people and do a ton of good in the world as opposed to some of the repeat offender bums of all races that complain about us. It appears to me that the numbers don’t prove a thing. Individual officers that treat people unfairly get complaints for their behavior and these problem children stick out like a sore thumb in their departments. You get treated unfairly, call the department and complain. Don’t forget that if it was me that stopped you, there will be a little movie of the traffic stop with audio recording. So when you lie that the officer called you the “N word” or swore at you, know that you are going to look pretty foolish when I get to play my movie and not only was I polite but almost cordial. (Don’t laugh, people lie about this stuff regularly. Of course some supervisors and the public will assume you did something that would cause you to risk the pension you are earning.) Anyway, I am yet to be convinced that race profiling is the widespead epidemic that all these cop haters want to claim. - respectful - Wednesday, Jul 5, 06 @ 6:59 pm: Robbie says the disparity isn’t big enough to cause concern? Nonwhite drivers have nearly triple the chance of white drivers of having their car searched. Isn’t 283% a big enough disparity for ya? YDD makes more sense today than usual. Maybe because he’s not so partisan today. As far as the copper, do you think the big differences among departments in rate of stopping minorities is just, say, coincidence? Has the copper really never heard a single white colleague make derogatory racial comments? - Lovie's Leather - Wednesday, Jul 5, 06 @ 8:49 pm: There is no racial profiling, no racism, it is not even associated with economic status. Here is why…. I come from a small town of 1500 people. 2 asians, 1 black, all the rest white. I, at minimum, know the names of 98% of the town. The county is only 6,000 people. I probably know 90% or more of them. The village, county, and state police are known by everyone. Even if one of them doesn’t know you, they would say, “oh, so-and-so is your dad. Okay, he and I used to…” I know, most people think it is wierd. But the fact is, we really don’t get tickets. I could go 50 in a 30 without a seatbelt. Yes, I would probably get pulled over. Odds of me getting a ticket, less than 1%. Odds are, they wouldn’t normally stop me because they recognize my car and know that I have a good record. So if you would take the rural areas out of the equation, I bet you would easily see eqaul treatment of minorites and whites. - A copper myself again - Wednesday, Jul 5, 06 @ 10:31 pm: Respectful- It’s hard to know what circumstances lead to the differences between departments, I would guess it is differences in where the officers are assigned to patrol and the race makup of those areas like the scenario posted above with assigning more officers to a high crime area primarily populated by minorities. Different departments assign patrols different ways… Geography, number of calls, whatever. Some departments don’t put any emphasis on traffic patrol, some departments are run by elected sheriffs who need to get votes and don’t want deputies writing tickets and offending voters. Some departments are traffic crazy. You are also talking about a state that has very urban areas and very rural areas. There is a lot in play. More than I can think of in five minutes… As far as hearing a white officer make a slur, no I have not heard that. If you stop and think about it, it is not very fashionable to say those kinds of words in many social circles these days. I don’t know where you get your perception of police officers, but they are pretty much normal people who at times have extraordinary employment. I think 99.9% of us feel racial slurs are just plain ugly. We get enough of that kind of talk from the bad guys and most of us don’t want to act like that. - BBishere2 - Thursday, Jul 6, 06 @ 8:15 am: Maybe we should take a census for each area and then have that same racially balanced police force patrolling in their own areas and according to those race statistics, write tickets on a daily basis in accordance of each area’s racial profile. So let’s see, today, I’m supposed to write tickets to 3 white people, 2 black and 1/2 asian. Hmmm, where’s that half asian going to come from - well, if I write only 1 ticket every two days for an asian that should be ok. Nope, if those statistics are counted on the day that you wrote that one asian ticket, you’re obviously a racist and a bigot because you wrote a disproportionately amount of tickets toward the asian citizens, shame on you. No way would I want to be a cop in this country. The criminals have all of the rights and the victims and police have none. All of the special interest groups only concerned with their BS instead of the good of the people/country breathing down their necks, second guessing each and every decision. No way. Can’t shoot some criminal for running away from you during a stop or arrest - have to be a sprinter while carrying all of that equipment around. - Woe is us - Thursday, Jul 6, 06 @ 9:36 am: I want to be clear. It isn’t just white cops that are guilty of racial profiling or pulling folks over for DUB. It seems that all cops tend to find minorities guilty of something. - woe - Thursday, Jul 6, 06 @ 10:08 am: No kidding? Every ethic group commits crimes? What a shocker! Sorry, comments for this post are now closed.