Vt. race study finds traffic-ticket disparity
ROYALTON, Vt.—A study of almost 50,000 traffic stops by Vermont troopers over a year found that minority drivers were more like to be stopped and ticketed and their vehicles be searched than white drivers, officials said Wednesday.
The difference was small, but some were statistically significant, said the lead of author of the report, Jack McDevitt of the Institute on Race and Justice at Northeastern University in Boston, who conducted the study at the request of the Vermont State Police.
The head of the State Police said the report was good news because it could be used as a tool to improve training and to encourage closer work between the state police and Vermont's small minority population.
"I'm mostly concerned with public perception at this point," Col. Tom L'Esperance said at a news conference held at the State Police barracks in Royalton. "I really want the public to look at the report, read it and draw conclusions for themselves."
Robert Appel, the executive director of the Vermont Human Rights Commission, said he applauded that the police undertook the study without being forced to do so, but he said after he read the report he felt the analysis was flawed.
"When one drills down into these data that it may show significant disparities in the rates of search after the officer has perceived the operator's race, and the severity of the sanction imposed as a result of the stops as has occurred in other recent studies," Appel said.
Curtiss Reed Jr., the executive director of the Brattleboro-based Vermont Partnership for Fairness and Diversity, which works to "eliminate prejudice and discrimination of all kinds," attended the police news conference. He said he was pleased the police were being open in efforts to determine any bias in troopers' actions.
"We found the process was really transparent. It really forced us to take a look the difference between our perceptions and reality," Reed said. "Oftentimes perceptions are realities, but those perceptions are driven by something other than data; with this particular data we can say state police are doing a really great job."
Historically, Vermont has had one of the smallest minority populations in the country. The issue of potential bias or racial profiling by law enforcement agencies, though, has been an occasional, yet persistent issue.
In November, the state revised its bias-free policing policy after the detention of two Mexican farm workers who were riding in a car that was stopped for speeding. The new policy stressed that State Police would not ask about an individual's immigration status during an investigation into a civil matter.
And Appel said that in the past 30 months the Human Rights Commission has received 10 complaints from African-American motorists or passengers alleging racially biased treatment by Vermont law enforcement agencies, and that those cases are a substantial portion of his organization's caseload.
The statistics used in the report released Wednesday were drawn from 49,672 traffic stops done by 275 troopers between July 2010 and June 2011. The most significant difference came in the percentage of drivers who were issued citations rather than warnings after being stopped -- 42 percent of white drivers were given tickets, while 52 percent of non-white drivers were ticketed, McDevitt said.
"Sometimes you find that this is unconscious bias, or implicit bias," McDevitt said. "It isn't that you have a racist officer, it's just that the officer isn't paying attention or doesn't know so that when shown they can change their behavior."
McDevitt said that he has done a number of similar analyses across the country and that Vermont was unusual because the study was done by the State Police without it being forced to conduct it.
As a whole, the number of minority drivers stopped by State Police is in line with Vermont's minority population, McDevitt said. The most significant difference in the way troopers treated white versus non-white drivers came in the decision to issue a ticket. Almost 42 percent of whites were ticketed, while 52 percent of non-whites were.
There were also smaller differences in which non-whites were more likely to be stopped and, once stopped, have their vehicles searched. And non-whites were less likely to be found with contraband.
"One of the things that this report shows is that We are willing to critically look at ourselves and critically look at ourselves and say `Hey, where can we be now,'" said Public Safety Commissioner Keith Flynn, who also attended the news conference. "How can we get better at this, and that's what this is all about."
