This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, June 25, 2012 - We call it bias-based policing. You think of it as racial profiling. The former is unlawful. The latter is an inaccurate representation of a difficult problem addressed by statute in the state of Missouri for 12 years.
It’s no secret that all people, including law enforcement officers, harbor racial bias. In 2000, Missouri was the fourth state to pass anti-racial profiling legislation. Thanks to that legislation, promoted significantly by the ACLU-Eastern Missouri, we now have 12 years’ worth of data on and attention paid to Missouri vehicle stops.
There has been both collaboration and serious reflection among police and minority/community organizations. But we are concerned that the annual release of data results in unfair demonization of police, and provides little in the way of substantive measures to respond to those ethnic groups who are unfairly targeted.
On the statute’s 10th anniversary, it became clear to ADL that the data, as presented, were, by themselves, ineffective at problem solving. So we convened the Missouri Roundtable on Bias-Based Policing to bring folks together to reach consensus on the gaps in the decade-old legislation.
Police chiefs are at the table: St. Louis County, St. Louis City, Columbia, Kansas City, Springfield and the Missouri State Highway Patrol. Statewide advocates are at the table: NAACP, ACLU, Missouri Immigrant and Refugee Advocates, the Missouri Association for Social Welfare, the Springfield Human Relations Commission and the Interfaith Committee on Latin America. University researchers are working with police across the state, and departments are addressing the matter internally with unique approaches.
But communities and demographics have changed. Ten years ago, the immigration debate was utterly different. Today, some communities are trying to deputize police as immigration enforcement agents.
With the release of Missouri’s 2012 report, the question is, “What do the data actually show?” While the data are compelling, we want to focus on the root issue: bias and stereotyping.
Police are not unique in their bias, but their role in society means that tensions are higher when they’re involved. The key goal of policing is to catch the bad guys. Yet, minorities are stopped and searched more frequently than whites, despite the finding that whites are more likely to commit crimes (as seen in the report’s contraband hit rates).
Moreover, data are based on police self-reporting. Are officers acting in their own worst interest? Are the data skewed for other reasons? When do officers fill out their reports? Do they talk to drivers first? What assumptions do they make?
Data analysis about a very human interaction is remarkably difficult. While it is foolish to assert that there is no bias in policing, there are many situations where the report is misleading.
Take Ladue, for instance. It’s a great example because the vehicle stop data simply do not reflect the reality on the ground. The number of minority residents is less than 1 percent, but the report suggests that African Americans are stopped 16 times more often based on their percentage of the city population. But that’s an incorrect benchmark, and so the report leaves an impression that brushes the entire department negatively. So what do you know about how the Ladue Police address the issue?
The Ladue Police Department compares each officer's stops against that of similarly assigned officers. This approach helps identify any officer who appears to be targeting drivers of a specific racial group. Given the movement of drivers traveling in and through Ladue, for that city, and many others in the state, this is the most appropriate analysis available.
Similarly, for those communities off a busy highway, this analysis will allow command staff to know if an officer appears to be stopping an inordinately high percentage of drivers from one race or ethnic group over another. Further, some departments are using “early warning systems,” data that show a particular officer needs attention, may require administrative inquiry, needs to be disciplined or terminated.
Better still would be to make direct observations on the streets; that option is expensive and burdensome.
We must look more closely at consent searches. Oftentimes, police stop vehicles but do not have probable cause to search. In those circumstances, officers may ask a driver to consent. Many don’t realize they have a choice. Just because an officer asks to search the car, doesn’t mean you have to allow it. Part of what we hope updated legislation will accomplish is to enable community advocates to better educate their constituents about these rights.
We must increase anti-bias education for all police officers, more than is required now, and it must be provocative to be effective. Anti-bias education does more than simply challenge personal stereotypes of people, minorities in particular. It disrupts aspects of policing, discretion in particular, that allow bias to negatively impact the traffic stop itself.
Accountability must be real. The statute must address the number of departments that don’t report data or report incompletely. Current penalties in the statute are insufficient. Finally, there is no way we can effectively reduce bias in policing without community-police dialogue.
Community-oriented policing has been around since the 1970s, but perhaps mandating community-police partnerships will help both gain understanding of the other, the only way to address how unfair and unlawful treatment actually makes people feel. If you don’t know whether your community is engaging formally with its police, find out and then make the commitment to engage. Do not assume your police department doesn’t care – that’s an easy out. Building such relationships goes way beyond improving police/community relationships, it makes your community more secure.
With an updated statute, we can change more than just research, language, dialogue and training components. We can impact the very way in which people feel about policing and how police feel about those they are charged to protect and serve. After all, if we share anything, we share a goal of creating safe, vibrant, engaging Missouri communities -- it’s not called community policing for nothing.
Karen Aroesty is regional director of the Anti-Defamation League, Missouri/Southern Illinois.