The Associated Press
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) - Police departments statewide have begun another round of documenting traffic stops, after lawmakers called for another year of compiling statistics to see whether police practice racial profiling.
The collection effort began last week. Officers were required to document each stop on a card that included the driver’s race, time and location, and reason for the stop.
A report released in June 2003 showed police throughout the state pull over nonwhite drivers in disproportionate numbers to whites. The report, compiled based on two years of data collected by police, also concluded that police searched nonwhite drivers two to two and a half times more often than whites.
Civic leaders said the report confirmed minorities’ views that racial profiling has been employed by police and persists.
Lawmakers decided in the last session to extend the survey for another year. The data will be gathered by the state Justice Commission, and analyzed by experts on racial profiling at Northeastern University. Quarterly reports are expected.
Researcher Amy Farrell said vehicle searches was “one of the areas where there were the more consistent disparities” between the way police treated whites and nonwhites in the first study. She said researchers want to learn why there’s a disparity in stops and searches.
The effort began the same week a Scituate officer was acquitted of charges of profiling a man of Cape Verdean descent. Jean Phillipe Barros claimed his constitutional rights were violated when Officer Kevin Pendergast pulled him over in Scituate. A federal jury disagreed, saying Pendergast did not violate the man’s rights to equal protection and to freedom from unreasonable seizure.
In the first study, the ten cities with the greatest disparity in nonwhites versus whites pulled over were: Cranston, Cumberland, Foster, Johnston, Lincoln, North Providence, North Smithfield, Providence, Smithfield and Woonsocket.
The cities with the least disparity in stopping nonwhites were, the report found: Barrington, Bristol, Burrillville, Coventry, Pawtucket, South Kingstown and Tiverton.
But the Bristol and Tiverton departments were among those showing the greatest disparity in searches of whites and nonwhites, the report found.