A Michigan State Police survey of more than 400,000 traffic stops over nine months shows little evidence that troopers are pulling over more minority motorists than white ones.
“What the numbers have shown and will show is there is absolutely no evidence of racial profiling at the Michigan State Police,” state police Capt. Jack Shepherd told The Detroit News.
Critics say the report, not yet complete, takes a statistically superficial look at whether minorities are being stopped by police at a higher rate, a controversial practice called racial profiling. Critics say traffic stops at some outlying state police posts hint that racial profiling does occur.
The data compiled for the first nine months of 2000 by the state’s 1,200 troopers show that black drivers were issued 11.8 percent of 202,903 total tickets, the newspaper reported. The census estimates blacks make up 13.8 percent of Michigan’s population.
About 1 in every 20 traffic stops by the state police results in a search.
Later this month, the department will release the full results of the yearlong probe, the first it has done to track the race of drivers stopped and ticketed.
The department also has decided to extend what was initially to be a one-year pilot program and to hire an outside consultant to review collected data.
The Michigan chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union disputed the state police contention that there is no evidence of racial profiling.
“There is certainly cause for concern in the report. The report raises a lot of questions,” said Kary Moss, executive director of the Michigan ACLU.
Moss suggested the state compare the overall number of motorists on state roads to the numbers stopped and searched to draw a meaningful comparison.
The state police’s data compares the population of the area covered by each post to forms completed by officers when they stop or search a driver.
“This is the million-dollar question facing state police across the country: How do we go about figuring out who is on what highway and when?” said Chris Maxwell, an assistant professor of criminal justice at Michigan State University.
The state police are using the report to respond to criticism that blacks are subjected to probable-cause searches at a much higher rate than whites. The police reviewed 235 such searches at eight sites across the state.
The departments report shows that contraband was found in 32 percent of the searches and drugs in 18 percent of them, Shepherd said.
“That’s a telling statistic that we weren’t on some fishing expedition,” Shepherd said.
State police will have in place new training on racial sensitivity and other racial profiling related issues this year, Shepherd said.
Last week, the Grand Rapids Police Department released a report that suggested black and Hispanic men were more likely to be pulled over than white men, based on a three-month review of tickets.
And the Eastpointe Police Department remains under investigation by the U.S. Justice Department on allegations that its officers singled out black motorists for traffic stops.
