Race difference in traffic stops widens since '04

~ The rates for pulling over black drivers in Cape Girardeau, Jackson and Scott City were higher than the state average.

Black motorists in Missouri are more likely to be pulled over by police than white drivers, with the odds in the Cape Girardeau area even greater than the state average, according to an analysis of more than 1.5 million traffic stops last year.

The annual report released Thursday by Attorney General Jay Nixon shows black drivers were 46 percent more likely to be stopped than either white or Hispanic drivers. The disparity has widened since 2004, when blacks were 38 percent more likely than whites to be stopped.

The disparity was calculated by comparing the number of stops for a particular race with the percentage of the race's population in the town.

In Cape Girardeau, the odds were nearly double the state average, with blacks 81 percent more likely to be pulled over in the city than whites. In Jackson, black motorists were twice as likely to be pulled over than white drivers.

In Scott City, blacks were 21 times more likely to be pulled over than whites. But those numbers are misleading, according to Scott City police chief Don Cobb. Of the 122 stops of blacks in 2005, 101 occurred on Interstate 55.

"Demographics of the interstate are not represented by the town next to it," Cobb said, adding that most speeding tickets issued on the interstate were for out-of-towners.

"There is not a radar gun out there that is going to tell me the ethnicity of the driver," Cobb said.

That sentiment was shared by Cape Girardeau County Lt. Vincent Diebold, who stressed the majority of stops in the county are at night.

"There's no way to tell who's driving it," Diebold said, adding most times a deputy who pulls a vehicle over approached it from the rear.

According to the report, black drivers in the county were 11 percent more likely to be pulled over last year than whites, 30 percent less than the state average.

A factor that could make the data misleading in Cape Girardeau is the variation in the city's daytime population. Commuters can boost the city's actual population of 35,000 as high as 100,000 during the day, according to police Capt. Roger Fields.

"Our officers have to deal with all that population," Fields said, adding the increased city size would not be reflected in the report.

Nixon, who is required by law to compile traffic-stop data from Missouri's law enforcement agencies, said the statistical disproportion does not prove law officers are stopping minority drivers because of their race. But he added: "Missouri law enforcement should continue their constructive efforts to eliminate any perceptions that traffic stops are being made solely on the basis of race, rather than for legitimate reasons."

Nixon said almost the exact same thing in a prepared statement after last year's report.

The regional leader of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People said the report's figures are disturbing. He pointed particularly to the fact that black drivers were stopped and searched at a higher rate than whites, yet contraband was found on black drivers at a lower rate -- in 18.6 percent of searches compared to 23.6 of searches for whites.

Black motorists "are being humiliated by the law. They are being subjected to searches when clearly whatever predisposition the officer had when they stopped them is not being validated by the hard evidence of the stop," said the Rev. Gill Ford of St. Louis, director of a 10-state region for the NAACP.

Statewide, black motorists who were stopped were 78 percent more likely to be searched than whites -- up from 71 percent in 2004.

By contrast, less than 1 percent point separated searches of vehicles of blacks compared to whites in Jackson, and the difference between the two in Scott City was slightly more than 1 percent. In Cape Girardeau, vehicles of blacks were searched 9.55 percent of the time and whites 5.44 percent. In the county, blacks pulled over were 41 percent more likely to be searched.

Fields stressed that traffic stops in the city are based on reasonable causes, and the majority of searches conducted were after an arrest, when the driver does not have to provide consent.

"We know how we conduct our business, and we know we don't condone racial profiling," he said.

Citations issued following a traffic stop varied in the area. A black person pulled over in Cape Girardeau received a citation 66 percent of the time compared to 75 percent with whites. In Jackson blacks received tickets 17.8 percent of the time and whites 32.8 percent.

In Scott City, blacks received a citation 61.5 percent of the time compared to 37.6 with whites. The difference in Cape Girardeau County was less than 3 percent.

The statewide total of more than 1.5 million traffic stops in 2005 was up from 1.37 million the previous year, an increase of about 10 percent. Nixon said part of that may be attributable to a change in law that took effect in August 2004 requiring the reporting of a wider variety of stops.

This year's report used 2005 census estimates compiled by Geolytics Inc. Previous reports used population figures from the 2000 census.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

kmorrison@semissourian.com

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