Racial disparity of traffic stops inches upward in Cape

Black motorists on average are pulled over at a disproportionately high rate in Missouri, according to a report by the Missouri Attorney General's Office.

The annual report also indicates the disparity between traffic-stop rates for white and black drivers in Cape Girardeau has increased gradually since 2012.

The report compared traffic-stop figures to the demographic composition of driving-age individuals in cities around the state.

If motorists of a racial group were pulled over at a rate consistent with their demographic size, the report would show a value -- called the "disparity index" -- of 1.

Disparity-index values higher than 1 indicate disproportionately high stop rates. Statewide, the disparity-index value for white drivers was 0.94, while for black drivers, it was 1.65, meaning black drivers were about 75 percent more likely to be stopped than whites.

The Cape Girardeau Police Department's disparity index value was 2.09 for black motorists. For white motorists, that value was 0.87 -- the lowest since at least the year 2000, according to the report. The findings show black drivers were 2.4 times more likely than whites to be stopped last year.

Cape Girardeau public-information officer Sgt. Rick Schmidt said the report's findings are considered each year, and all officers undergo training each year to avoid instances of bias better.

"We stop cars based on a traffic violation or a reasonable suspicion to stop that car," he said.

"The only way that anything else would check into that is if we're looking for a particular person in reference to a crime that occurred and the car that we stopped or the passenger matched that description of the person we're looking for in reference to that crime. Other than that, we stop for violations."

Don Love, co-chairman of the Empower Missouri Human Rights Task Force, has been involved in compiling and analyzing law-enforcement data used in the attorney general's report since 2009.

He said the annual reports are not published as proof of bad policing, but as a tool to identify factors that may contribute to racial disparity in law enforcement.

He said the figures are most helpful when examining law-enforcement situations that are inherently more subjective.

Black drivers in Cape Girardeau were 67 percent more likely to be stopped for speeding than whites but were 3.88 times as likely to be stopped for following too closely and more than four times more likely than whites to be stopped for failing to signal, according to the annual report.

"That begins to raise a flag," Love said. "These are things that are more subjective. That would tend to indicate officers aren't treating everybody equally. Now, it doesn't prove bias. These could be happening in high-crime areas or high-accident areas, and that's OK if there really isn't bias involved ... but following too close is pretty subjective, and we all do it."

Researchers also collected data about the outcome of traffic stops.

That data showed Cape Girardeau police officers, after the initial stop, were 2.59 times more likely to conduct consent searches on black drivers than whites.

When asking for consent to search a vehicle, Love said, officers are more susceptible to be influenced by implicit bias.

But rather than condemning the searches or officers, Love said, the data are intended to help agencies form policies to eliminate opportunities for such bias.

Schmidt pointed to Cape Girardeau's status as a regional draw as one explanation for why the number of black drivers stopped is disproportionately high.

"We're the major retail hub in the tri-state area; we get how many extra motorists that come into town who don't live here? So that's where some of our disparity index is generated from," he said. "A lot of cars that we stop are not Cape Girardeau residents."

He said his department has suggested non-resident data also be collected for more precise analysis -- a change Love said he's suggested.

"Anything that we can do to show citizens in general we're good neighbors helps us tenfold. We don't want to be just a police department; we want to be neighbors for the city of Cape," Schmidt said. "[Residents] should be able to call us or to flag us down and talk to us person to person. That's what we strive for."

tgraef@semissourian.com

(573) 388-3627

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Cape police disparity index

Cape Girardeau Police Department's disparity index, 2012 through 2016, according to the most recent Missouri Attorney General's Vehicle Stops Report. Year White Black

2012 0.95 1.67

2013 0.91 1.86

2014 0.89 1.90

2015 0.89 1.96

2016 0.87 2.09