[Peace-discuss] Fwd: [Announce] NG article - "Analysis of Urbana traffic stop trends being discussed"

[Barbara kessel]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Brian Dolinar <briandolinar at gmail.com>
Date: Wed, Jul 13, 2011 at 9:26 AM
Subject: [Announce] NG article - "Analysis of Urbana traffic stop trends
being discussed"
To: discuss list <discuss at communitycourtwatch.org>, Court Watch <
announce at communitycourtwatch.org>,
immigration--criminal-justice-research-group at googlegroups.com


Analysis of Urbana traffic stop trends being discussed
By *Patrick Wade*
Created *07/13/2011 - 9:00am*
Wed, 07/13/2011 - 9:00am | The
News-Gazette<http://www.news-gazette.com/users/digitalmedia>
[1]

URBANA — To get a better handle on why racial groups aren't proportionally
represented in police traffic stops, the city has conducted and released an
independent statistical analysis of three years' worth of data.

The analysis will be the subject of a joint meeting of two city committees
that concern themselves with policing trends at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday at the
Urbana City Building, 400 S. Vine St.

In December, the human relations commission took its first look at
traffic-stop data released by the Illinois Department of Transportation,
which showed 47 percent of Urbana traffic stops involved nonwhite drivers,
even though statisticians estimate Urbana's minority driving population to
be about 30 percent of all drivers.

That would suggest that nonwhite drivers are 56 percent more likely to get
pulled over in Urbana than they would be if the demographics of drivers in
traffic stops were proportional to the representation of racial groups in
the driving population.

That data was from 2009, the most recently available at the time the city
took up the issue. IDOT has since released its 2010 study, which shows the
number to have risen to 70 percent in Urbana.

According to IDOT, nonwhite drivers were pulled over in 2010 by Champaign
police 48 percent more often than statisticians would anticipate, up from 45
percent in 2009. Minority drivers were 50 percent more likely to get pulled
over by University of Illinois police in 2010, compared with 36 percent in
2009.

Among the rest of Illinois police, the three local agencies ranked roughly
among the middle of the pack.

But the IDOT study itself is a "screening tool," said Urbana human relations
officer Todd Rent, and it does not identify what may be the underlying
conditions.

"It can't give you a detailed overview of what may be causing or driving the
disproportionality," Rent said.

The city retained a University of Illinois Chicago graduate student to
further analyze traffic-stop data in its relation to the demographics of the
city. The independent report breaks down traffic stops by region,
neighborhoods, time of day, age and other factors.

For example, in a police beat with a higher African-American population and
a lower white population, black and white drivers were stopped at roughly
the same rate. When you exclude that police beat from the rest of the data,
the probability of a minority driver getting stopped over three years' worth
of data for the remainder of the city drops from 51 percent to 39 percent
more likely.

Except for Hispanic drivers, no disparity existed between racial groups
regarding whether an officer issued a warning or a citation. The
investigator found that Hispanic drivers receive a higher ratio of citations
because they are ticketed for offenses for which officers are more likely to
issue citations, like not having a driver's license, drunken driving and
having an uninsured vehicle, according to the report.

Whether these distinctions hold any significance will be up to the human
relations commission and the civilian police review board, Rent said. The
analysis settles on no specific recommendations, and how to proceed will be
directed by Wednesday night's discussion.

"I think it's clear that the city needs and wants to have a conversation
with the community about the level of policing in very different areas,"
Rent said.

He expects the community will have a "serious, thoughtful conversation."

"I think tomorrow should be the beginning of the conversation," Rent said.
"Now we can have the conversation from the standpoint of having knowledge,
greater knowledge, about what's going on than we did in the past."


-- 
Brian Dolinar, Ph.D.
303 W. Locust St.
Urbana, IL 61801
briandolinar at gmail.com

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