In the St. Louis region, the “driving while black” disparity did not improve much from 2011, according to the 2012 Vehicle Stops Report released by the Attorney General’s office on June 1.
African Americans are still about twice as likely to get pulled over by St. Louis city police as white drivers. For the St. Louis County Police Department, it’s a little less – 1.46 times as likely.
“Racial profiling is not a myth,” state Rep. Michael Butler said of the data. “It exists and it hurts.”
The annual Vehicle Stops Report, which was mandated by the state’s 2000 Missouri racial justice law, includes statewide data on race of drivers stopped and police’s reasons for the stops. As part of the report, state officials calculate the “disparity indexes” by comparing the proportion of stops for drivers of a particular race or ethnicity to the proportion of state or local population of that racial or ethnic group.
St. Louis City Police Department had a 1.4 disparity index, which was a slight drop from the 1.45 index in 2011. Basically, this means African Americans experienced 64 percent of the total traffic stops in 2012 but make up 45.7 percent of the population. Hence, 64 divided by 45.7 equals 1.4.
Because the index number is more than “1,” that indicates that police are pulling over more black drivers than proportionate to the population. Below “1” means there’s an underrepresentation. For white drivers in St. Louis city, the disparity index was 0.73 in 2012.
For St. Louis County, the disparity index is 1.38 for African Americans and .94 for Caucasians – both the exact same as reported in 2011.
The highest disparity index in the region belongs to Ladue Police Department with 15.75, followed by Warson Woods with 13.26, Des Peres with 10.95, Glendale with 9.73 and Brentwood with 7.38.
Looking at the state overall, the African-American disparity index was 1.57, down from the 2011 rate of 1.63. This is significant, because the state’s disparity has rarely dropped during the 13 years that the state has produced the reports.
Search by race
The 2012 report showed that Hispanic drivers were 1.92 times more likely than white drivers to be searched. African-American drivers were 1.83 times more likely to be searched when stopped than white drivers.
Jeanette Mott Oxford, executive director of the Missouri Association for Social Welfare, suggests that the state take the data analysis further to include consent searches.
“In a consent search, an officer does not have indisputable probable cause and so asks the driver for consent,” she said.
Currently the state provides data on the number of consent searches by race but does not calculate disparity index for consent searches. Residents can calculate the number for themselves by applying the same formula.
In Ladue in 2012, the disparity index for consent searches of African American drivers was 3.24, compared with 0.67 for white drivers. African American drivers are almost five times more likely to experience a consent search than white drivers. This number increased from last year.
Oxford said the racial profiling law is not intended to shame or punish officers or departments but to address these patterns through training and supervision.
“Bias is real but significant progress is possible with community effort,” she said. “The racial profiling law and the Vehicle Stops Reports are the most important tools that we currently have to get started.”
Butler said the data give police leaders a chance to put up or shut when they talk about seeking greater cooperation.
“Our police department has made it clear that it wants to create more cooperation in the black community,” Butler said, “and the black community has made it clear it wants crime deterred. We need individuals and organizations to make our wishes a reality.”