Law Enforcement agencies in Mass. should be aware of the results of a report that may have legal and policy ramifications.
A review of traffic ticket data shows Massachusetts police were more likely to search cars of black and Hispanic drivers during routine traffic stops than those of white drivers, the Boston Globe reported today.
Two years ago, the state began collecting information on traffic citations to measure possible racial profiling by police, following the example of 20 other states.
The Globe analyzed more than 750,000 tickets from every police department in the state and found a wide racial disparity in the tickets and vehicle searches.
Statewide, black and Hispanic drivers received traffic tickets at a rate twice their share of the population. Once ticketed, they were 50 percent more likely than whites to have their cars searched. But a higher percentage of the white drivers whose cars were searched were arrested, the study found.
Lorie A. Fridell, a criminologist and director of research at the Police Executive Research Forum, a national group of police executives, said disparities should serve as a strong red flag. “The implication is that the threshold for police is different in searching the two groups,” she said.
Among the findings:
- Blacks are 4.6 percent of the state’s driving-age population, but received 10 percent of tickets to state residents. Hispanics make up 5.6 percent of the population, but got 9.6 percent of tickets.
- Police tend to search minorities cars more often. Of ticketed Hispanic drivers, 2.4 percent were subjected to searches, followed by blacks (2.3 percent), American Indians (2.2), whites (1.6), Asians (0.8), and Middle Easterners (0.7). Blacks and Hispanics driving a new car were searched more often than whites in new cars.
- A higher percentage of the whites who were searched were apparently found with drugs. In all, 16 percent of whites searched were charged with a drug offense, compared with 12 percent of blacks searched, 10 percent of Hispanics, 7 percent of Asians, 6 percent of American Indians and 4 percent of Middle Easterners.
- In 19 communities, minorities who were ticketed were searched twice as often as whites.