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Government

Black Drivers More Likely To Be Stopped, Arrested In Davenport

Saint Ambrose University

Minority drivers are still disproportionately stopped and arrested during traffic stops in Davenport. 
That's according to the latest annual study by St. Ambrose University, which says that minorities are nearly three times more likely to be arrested during a traffic stop, and that Davenport police are stopping more minorities than they should be.

Researchers monitored roads for four months in areas where there's a large number of traffic stops or a high percentage of minority residents. They determined how many white and non-white drivers drove by in one day, and then counted the number of drivers stopped by police in each category to determine racial profiling or bias. 

"Using our benchmarks, we look for to see if there's a difference between the percentage of minority drivers on the road, and the percentage of minority drivers stopped by police," Chris Barnum, the lead researcher of the study said. "And if there is a difference, that's called disproportionality, and a lot of people would refer to that as racial profiling."

The results show that the percentage of minority drivers stopped by the police department as a whole is 7 points higher than the percentage of minority drivers on the road. The difference between minorities drivers and those stopped by the department's special NET unit is higher, reaching a 12 percentage point difference.

Barnum says there could be a number of reasons contributing to the high disproportionality in the NETS division. Those officers typically work in neighborhoods with higher levels of crime. When  NETS officers are reassigned to different areas, their levels of disproportionality tend to decrease.

The results in the NET division is an improvement from last year -- decreasing eight percentage points from 20 in 2016. 

Credit Davenport Police Department

The results of the study also reveal that minority drivers are 2.7 times more likely to be arrested during a traffic stop in Davenport, though Barnum says that's not necessarily a direct indication of racial profiling.

"A lot of people will want to say 'Well that's evidence of bias,' and it may be, but not necessarily," Barnum said. "There's some types of arrests where an officer has little choice in the decision to make an arrest. For instance if a driver has a warrant. The officer has very little choice in that arrest, so it can't be bias."

According to Barnum, the department doesn't keep reasons for arrests in it's database, making it impossible for researchers to tell which arrests are subject to an officer's discretion, and which are not. 

St. Ambrose has conducted the study each year since 2011, and Barnum says the numbers on stops and arrests haven't changed much.

But one staggering change in the data this year was a more than 50 percent decrease in the number of traffic stops made by police since St. Ambrose started monitoring the department -- from about 10,000 in 2011 to 5,000 in 2016. 

"There's several reasons why it could be -- they could be very busy or it could be maybe the fact that we've been studying the data for so long there has led to some disengagement in terms of the officers, they're not stopping cars because they know they're being watched." 

The Davenport Police Department hasn't yet responded to a request for an interview.

Barnum also released the results of a similar study in Dubuque this week which found that minority drivers were not disporportionately stopped by police, but once stopped, they were 3.5 times more likely to be arrested.

Government