Profiling the Profilers: A Case Study of Traffic Stops Made by Flint City Police during the Year of 1997

Abstract

The present study focused on the notion that police officers, when conducting stops, are motivated by racial factors. One main data pool was used for this case study. The data came from 8265 documented traffic stops that were captured on the individual police officer's daily activity reports. This set if data was useful when looking at the proportion of individuals stopped by the City of Flint. <p>The data sample included activity logs that were kept by 138 police officers in the City of Flint for every day of the year, twenty-four hours a day. These police officers were assigned to the “General” patrol divisions that were assigned throughout the City of Flint. The study showed statistically the number of whites and blacks stopped, the race of the officer initiating the stop, and whether these individuals were released with a verbal warning or ticketed. In addition, the study was able to determine if there was any significance to the race or sex of the officer and their frequency in stopping and ticketing white and black citizens. <p>Significant differences were found between the amounts of whites and blacks stopped by the officers. The overall numbers showed that sixty percent of all the traffic stops made were made onto black drivers. More specifically, forty-six percent of the total stops were to black male drivers. <p>A similar pattern was found when comparing the number of traffic tickets given. Again, black males were ticketed at the highest rate compared to that of any other drivers. Black males made up between 45%-53% of all tickets given by the different categories of officers. In other words, almost half of all the tickets given by the different categories of officers were given to black males. <p>These finding suggest that black drivers are being disproportionately stopped and ticketed compared to that of white drivers. The data does suggest that black officers are disproportionately stopping blacks at a much higher rate than other officers are, at a statistically significant level of 1%. However, the suggestion that a specific group of officers or even individual officers were acting with racial bias was not supported with these data alone.