Representative Curtis holds hearing on biased traffic stops

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo- Representative Courtney Curtis of Ferguson held a hearing Monday afternoon to discuss racial profiling at traffic stops.

The president of the St. Louis Branch of the NAACP, Adolphus Pruitt, was the first to testify. He brought records dating back to 2012. He first showed that the documented traffic stops were fairly even between white people and black people.

Upon further investigation, he found that specifically in the St. Louis County, police were issuing mostly warnings toward white people and possibly fabricating numbers to make it appear they stopped more white people than they actually did.

Curtis wants the Attorney Generals office to report the accurate numbers so he can see if there is racial bias going on during traffic stops.

General Council for the Attorney General’s office, Joan Gummels was also there to testify. She stated that they have no way of double checking the over one million traffic stops, but a possible solution could be more body cameras.

Curtis urged the AG’s office to do more, “I would definitely like to see the Attorney General’s office to come up with some ways to ensure that the reports are accurate, one. Two, to use the office in a positive manor to ensure that if they’re trends that are negative, that negatively impact communities like mine, that the Attorney General is more proactive in ensuring that we stamp that out. That would be at least be a start, but we can continue the discussion once we find out how many more inaccurate reports are out there.”

One suggestion Curtis made was real time data collection. After every traffic stop, police immediately have to enter in the data. And then once their shift is over, sign a paper acknowledging that all their stops regardless of its a warning or citation is documented.

Curtis also said he would be checking back in with the Attorney General’s office next week.