Columbia police, city manager seek stories on racial profiling

UPDATE: Dozens of people came to discuss racial profiling within the Columbia Police Department, and possible ways to address it.

The two-hour meeting, led by City Manager Mike Matthes, featured several people sharing personal stories and asking for clarification on how the department conducts its stops and patrols.

Columbia Police Chief Burton said he feels the department needed further investigation on whether or not racial profiling existed. While he said he has not seen evidence his officers racially profile, he told the crowd it was his responsibility to look into it if they felt it was a problem.

Some residents shared personal stories of police following them, sometimes asking to search their car or person, when they said they had done nothing wrong. One man said he was handcuffed when police believed he was a robbery suspect. Another said police asked to search his car after seeing him leave a parking lot they had been called to for suspicious activity.

Burton said oftentimes officers pull over those in the area that roughly match the description given by callers. If a caller hears gunshots and sees a black male driving away, officers will pull over several black males in the area. He said he did not think this was racial profiling but promised to keep an eye on individual officers’ traffic stop numbers and follow up if questions of racial profiling seem obvious.

The department asked all officers to get written consent from drivers to search a car. Burton said this would help dispel an “intimidation factor” the public might have with police stops. Several audience members asked how the process worked and felt the card used for written consent was incomplete. One woman said the cards don’t require the officer to put down why they want to search the car. David Tyson Smith, a local lawyer, also said the written consent form could lead to more officers relying on smell to conduct probable cause searches, since smell is a more subjective, hard to dispute reason.

“If we miss something, we want them to tell us what should be on the card that’s not,” Matthes told ABC 17 News after the meeting.

Matthes said the city will delve deeper into traffic stop data to better understand the issue. He did not say how long the process would take, but said results will be presented to the city council for possible action. Matthes also said the department could better itself in the meantime.

“We can be great at our job, even though we’re few in number,” Matthes said. “I believe we do that now, but I think there’s room for improvement”

ORIGINAL: Top officials with the City of Columbia, including its police department, will hold a town hall meeting to hear people’s concerns about racial profiling in the community.

City Manager Mike Matthes and police Chief Ken Burton are listed to be in attendance Monday night at City Hall beginning at 6 p.m. The event is “for citizens to discuss their racial profiling experiences and the data from the Missouri Attorney General’s Vehicle Stops Report” with both of them.

The attorney general’s 2016 report indicated that black drivers were three times more likely to be pulled over than white drivers by Columbia police and Boone County sheriff’s deputies. Burton dismissed the notion that his officers racially profiled anyone, but admitted to a “change of heart” several months later, asking the community for more information.

Race Matters, Friends, a local advocacy group for diversity and inclusion, called for Burton’s firing in July due to his perceived inaction after the report’s release. Since then, Burton and Matthes have attended meetings on the topic.

The town hall meeting will take place in the lobby-level conference room at City Hall.