St. Louis Post-Dispatch from St. Louis, Missouri • Page 4

1 1 1 0 an i PuST-aSRWLH SATURDAY, JUNE 2,2001 3 JUM02 Z001 s. TheS tate's Report On Racial Profiling tun tolste i chaijgfe ran Al i I i I Vil I Missouri Attorney General Jay Nixon on Friday presents the state's includes data from 634 police agencies for the last four months of LAURIE SKRIVAN POST-DISPATCH study of racial profiling in traffic stops by police statewide. The study last year. In parts of the St. Louis area, black drivers were stopped by police and searched disproportionately more often than whites.

By Paul Hampel Of the Post-Dispatch African-Americans who long contended that police stop them more often than whites found their suspicions supported in a massive report on racial profiling released Friday by Missouri Attorney General Jay Nixon. The state's first detailed examination of traffic stops and one of the first studies of its kind in the nation showed that black drivers were involved 30 percent more often than whites, and searched 70 percent more often. "The information does nothing to disprove the perception of racial profiling," Nixon said. "While anecdotes are not evidence, they lead me to believe that African-Americans and Hispanics have in certain instances been targets of racial profiling in Missouri." However, Nixon cautioned that "this report should not be used for finger pointing" and offered warnings that some of the numbers cannot be trusted for comparison among police agencies. The report, covering the last four months of 2000, was mandated by the Legislature last year.

Totaling 1329 pages, it was culled from 634 police agencies reporting on 453,189 stops. Every jurisdiction was ordered to compile each stopped driver's race, sex and general age group and the reason and final result of every stop. (Only eight agencies, all outstate, failed to deliver reports.) For example, each agency showed how many of each race were stopped and why. The agency also totaled the arrests and citations, and identified the number of times drugs or weapons were found. Of the other minorities listed in the report, Hispanics were stopped at a rate below their proportion of the population but searched statewide almost twice as often as whites.

Asians, on the other hand, were stopped about half as often as blacks and about 40 percent as often as whites. In the city of St Louis, whites and blacks were stopped in numbers almost equal to their percentages of the population. However, blacks stopped in the city were searched at a rate four times higher than whites. St Louis Police Chief Joe Mokwa defended his agency's record. "This is not an alarming or discrediting thing for the city of St.

Louis. It actually looked very positive," Mokwa said. He said nearly half the blacks searched in the city had outstanding arrest warrants a factor not cross-referenced in the attorney general's report Mokwa also noted that more blacks than whites had arrest warrants. (606 blacks were searched and 281 had outstanding warrants; 134 whites were searched and 40 had warrants.) Mokwa said he would team up with county police and possibly other departments to provide more training for officers to be sensitive about race-motivated traffic stops. In areas patrolled by St Louis County police, blacks were 43 percent more likely than whites to be stopped, according to the state's methodology.

Blacks stopped were 30 percent more likely to be searched. In a statement issued Friday afternoon, St Louis County Police Chief Ron Batteile said: "What's more important than the number of traffic violators stopped by our officers is how drivers are treated after the car is stopped. Our review of the data indicates that motorists come "ignores the proper benchmark, the racial makeup of the motoring public driving in and through Ladue" on four major thoroughfares Interstates 64 and 170, and Clayton and Ladue roads. Meanwhile, the police chief of Rock Hill was at a loss to explain what he called his city's "pleasant predicament" a traffic stop rate for blacks that was three times less than for whites. Blacks are 28 percent of the population in Rock Hill, but they accounted for only 159, or 10.6 percent of the 1,499 stops.

"I was wondering if someone was going to call and ask me to explain that" said Chief Terry Good. "I wish I had an answer, but I'm not sure what it means." Ultimately, Nixon said the data may be best used to promote racial dialogue between police agencies and the public. "For too long, a reduced level of trust has hampered our ability to protect all individuals," Nixon said. "What this report shows is that instead of having our heads in the sand, we now have our heads in the light of day." Some information in this story was provided by Valerie Schremp of the Post-Dispatch staff. Reporter Paul Hampah E-mail: Phona: 314-340-8115 are treated fairly and impartially, regardless of race." The report cost the state half of that was paid to a team of statisticians led by Scott Decker, a criminology professor at the University of Missouri at St Louis.

Decker joined Nixon in a news conference Friday morning at the Wain wright Building downtown. He emphasized that important considerations not necessarily reflected in the data could significantly affect some reports. "No single number can be used to produce effective public policy," Decker said. He cited extenuating factors: Increased policing in high-crime areas where minorities are often the victims as well as the perpetrators of the crime. The presence of interstate highways, large shopping centers or major employers that affect the demographics of the driving population and thereby affect the proportions of stops and arrests.

Florissant Police Chief Steve Kruse cited demographics for the racial disparity in his city, where blacks were stopped about 4.5 times more often than whites. "The report does not reflect our policing population," Kruse said. "We're the largest city in St Louis County by population. But we serve the entire North County area, including the minority populations of cities around us such as Berkeley, Black Jack, Dellwood, Ferguson and Kinloch whose residents shop here and travel on our numerous arterial roadways." Shrewsbury was another city where police challenged statistics. According to the state's methodology, the search rate for Hispanics in that city was about 19 times greater than that of whites.

"A small number of stops for a statistical group can be misleading," said Chief Jeffrey Keller. "Only 11 Hispanics were stopped, and of those, three were searched and two were arrested." However, a larger statistical figure was available in Shrewsbury for stops of African-Americans, who accounted for 126 of the 988 stops in the city. The figures showed they were stopped almost 10 times more often than whites as a percentage of their population. Keller said further analysis of traffic stops, arrests and searches is needed for "more meaningful interpretations of the data." He said the city has retained an outside consultant to examine the material In Ladue, where blacks were 14 times as likely to be stopped than whites, police attached a disclaimer to their report, saying the out.