Black driver disparity in vehicle stops goes down
Columbia’s interim police chief said he wants to get to the bottom of why black drivers are pulled over more often than other races in Columbia.
The gap in the rate black drivers are pulled over compared to their percentage of the population went down in 2018, according to traffic stop data released last week by the Columbia Police Department.
But it’s still high. The 2018 “disparity index” for black drivers in Columbia was 2.92, down from 3.28 in 2017.
In Columbia, black drivers and those whose race was characterized as “other” were the only race with an index higher than 1, a trend that has held since the report’s inception in 2000.
The number compares how often drivers of a certain race are pulled over compared to their proportion of the population. A disparity index of 1 means drivers are pulled over at a rate that reflects their percentage of the population. A higher rating means drivers of that race are pulled over at a rate greater than their proportion of the general population.
The numbers are due to the Missouri Attorney General’s Office no later than June 1 each year. The office then compiles a statewide report that is posted online.
Chief Geoff Jones said that without the story behind the numbers he can’t speculate on why the number for black drivers continues to be much higher than it should be, and higher than other races.
“It’s really difficult for me to say that there is or isn’t a problem without knowing the context,” he said.
Jones said that, traditionally, the department has maintained that the numbers “don’t mean anything.”
“That’s not doing anybody any good,” he said.
Over the years, the community has been outspoken about these numbers and accused former Chief Ken Burton of fostering a racist environment.
Almost immediately after taking on the interim chief position, Jones established a committee that would look at what’s behind the disparity and find out what’s contributing to them to see if it is a race issue or something else.
“If that implicit bias is not being mitigated through training or experience, then that’s something that I hope the committee will recognize and we can address,” he said. “But I don’t know that that’s a factor or it isn’t. We have to look at it.”
The Columbia NAACP chapter president Mary Ratliff told ABC 17 News that she believes that the high disparity index is “unacceptable” and is, at its core, a race issue.
“I think that there’s a racial bias every place,” she said. “People say that there’s not but I worked all my life, and know that there’s racial bias everywhere.”
She is not on the committee, but there is an NAACP representative in the group. She said this is the step they’ve been talking to city leaders about taking, and that she’s proud of what they could accomplish.
“We are hopeful that they are able to look at this data as far as racial profiling is concerned,” she said. Tthen we will get to scrutinize when they have got it done in order to see what kinds of things are happening to cause this racial profiling to occur.”
She mentioned that poverty and economics has to be addressed because it could be part of the reason behind the high rate of vehicle stops in the black community.
“I am so adamant about this because everything that happens in our society has to do with, and especially when it relates to African American community, much of it has to do with the problem of poverty,” she said.
Jones said he hopes the committee can find the answers and make recommendations on how law enforcement can more fairly police the community.
The overall index uses the local jurisdiction’s population in its calculations but includes data on all drivers pulled over in that jurisdiction, instead of only resident drivers. Drivers from outside Columbia pulled over in the city limits are included in the city’s overall disparity index.
