[Peace-discuss] Urbana 2007: black drivers 3.5 times more likely to be pulled over than white drivers

[Tom Abram]

One thing I've noticed, purely speculation and obervation, is that
almost everytime I see someone pulled over by multiple police cars,
they're black.  If I were pulled over by multiple cars, I would be
much more distressed.  It could be I keep my eye out for it and pay
closer attention in these situations.  Or not.  I wonder if there's
any data on this.  If the police really are calling in multiple cars
at a higher rate for black drivers, that would be incredibly
intimidating.  These stats are already bad enough to warrant serious
action.

Tom Abram

On 2/8/09, Randall Cotton <recotton at earthlink.net> wrote:
> Here are statistics (with references) from the state's racial profiling
> report, as requested regarding the traffic stop disparity discussed at
> this evening's AWARE meeting.
>
> In Urbana during 2007, Black drivers were 3.46 times more likely to be
> pulled over for a traffic stop than white drivers. This is worse than 2
> years ago when I first drew attention to this statistic (which was 3.26
> at the time, for 2005 data).
>
> Here are the base statistics for Urbana during 2007
> including footnoted references and the math required
> to calculate the 3.46 disparity ratio
> -----------------------------------------------------
>
> Black folks:
> Driving population (based on US Census data and
> estimated by Northwestern University): 3875 [1]
> Traffic stops: 1160 [2]
>
> White folks:
> Driving population (based on US Census data and
> estimated by Northwestern University): 21428 [3]
> Traffic stops: 1854 [2]
>
> So there were (in Urbana, during 2007):
> 1160 traffic stops for 3875 black drivers
> and
> 1854 traffic stops for 21428 white drivers
>
> So the percentage of traffic stops per black driver was:
> 1160/3875 = .299 = 29.9%
> and the percentage of traffic stops per white driver was:
> 1854/21428 = .087 = 8.7%
>
> That is,
> For every 100 black drivers there were about 30 traffic stops
> For every 100 white drivers there were about 9 traffic stops
>
> So black drivers were more likely to be stopped than white drivers by a
> factor of 30/9 = 3.3.
>
> That is, black drivers were about 3.3 times more likely to be stopped than
> white drivers.
>
> You can see I did a little rounding in the calculations, so that's why the
> 3.3 didn't come out to exactly 3.46, but hopefully this gives you a solid
> understanding of the disparity.
>
> Attached is a graph showing this black vs white disparity in surrounding
> locales as well as Illinois as a whole and Chicago, as requested.
>
> [1] http://www.dot.state.il.us/trafficstop/2004summary.pdf , p. 161
> [2] http://www.dot.state.il.us/travelstats/2007%20Agency%20Reports.pdf ,
> p. 1706
> [3] http://www.dot.state.il.us/trafficstop/2004summary.pdf , p. 109
>