Columbia vehicle stop race disparity drops slightly, police chief and critics say more work must be done

COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)

The Missouri Attorney General's office released its annual traffic stop report on Tuesday, showing that the statewide disparity in traffic stops based on rates made a slight drop.

According to the data from the Missouri Attorney General's Annual report on traffic stops, black drivers in Missouri were pulled over 71.6% more than white drivers in 2020. That is down from 93.6% in 2019 when the disparity hit its highest from 2000 on.

The Columbia Police Department also saw a small decrease in the racial disparity, according to individual agency data provided by the state. In 2020, black drivers were pulled over 437.2% more than white drivers. That statistic has decreased about 24.6% since 2019 when it hit a peak of 461.8%.

This year, traffic stops across Missouri dropped significantly because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The report says traffic stops dropped nearly 24% in 2020 compared to 2019.

In Columbia, traffic stops in 2020 were more than cut in half compared to 2019. There were 15,015 in 2019 and only 7,772 in 2020.

Columbia Police Chief Geoff Jones said while the pandemic could have contributed to some of the declines, there is still work to be done to address the disparity issue.

"We have to make changes to our policies, our practices, our training, so we are policing more fairly," Jones said. "It's encouraging to see a slight decrease in the number, but we don't police to a number, we want to police fairly."

Some of the ways Jones said the department is addressing the disparity issue is having a research team from the University of Missouri independently look into it, as well as the Columbia Vehicle Stops committee to make recommendations to the department and review data.

Jones said the department has been reviewing its policies and working on long-term fixes to the issues with the research team and committee looking at the data.

"But it can't stop with just data collection, so we have a policy, we have the training, we have internal affairs all looking at outcomes from traffic stops and saying, ok what do we need to do better?" Jones said. "They're all making changes to their curriculum whether it's a policy change or a change in wording or training that may be subtle to you and I, it may have a long-lasting impact, and those are the things we are working towards."

The secretary of Race Matters, Friends Tara Warne-Griggs said she doesn't think the slight drop in had to do with any changes that were made. She hopes the department looks at their policy around investigative vehicle stops versus just traffic stops.

"I think they need to look at their practices and the strategies they deploy around that," Warne-Griggs said "They really need to adopt the philosophy of community-based policing, which they haven't wanted to do."

She said the organization will continue to call out these issues, and base recommendations on research that exists and don't believe the department has made any significant changes to address the issue.

"Your community thinks you have a problem, the data says you have a problem, you should do some deep reflection around that and they have been uninterested," Warne-Griggs said.

Jones responded to the criticism saying having the vehicle stop committee and external research team is one step.

"Implementing those changes is another step," Jones said. "We have a public input in our policies, we've had public input in our practices as far as the vehicle stops committee."

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