“Law-abiding drivers have the right to travel throughout Missouri without the fear that they will be stopped based solely on their race or ethnicity,” Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster writes in his analysis of traffic stop data for the state in 2009 that was released on Tuesday.
So far, so good. We want the state government’s top lawyer to come out squarely against racial profiling. However, when Koster adds, “I am confident that Missourians of all races and ethnic groups and law enforcement officers from throughout the state agree with me,” it is impossible to share his avowed confidence. The very data his office released concerning the more than 1.7 million reported traffic stops in Missouri in 2009 are enough to shatter that confidence.
According to the numbers, driving while black in Missouri is bad and getting worse. Let Koster himself tell you. “The disparity index for African-American drivers increased from 1.59 in 2008 to 1.62 in 2009,” Koster points out.
What does this mean, exactly? African Americans represent 10.7 percent of the state population age 16 years or older, but 17.4 percent of all traffic stops, for a value on the disparity index of 1.62. That means African Americans were stopped at a rate 62 percent greater than expected based solely on their proportion of the population old enough to drive.
To compare races, the likelihood that a black motorist was stopped is 1.7 times that of a white motorist (1.62 disparity index compared to .95 disparity index). In other words, blacks were 70 percent more likely than whites to be stopped based on their respective proportions of the Missouri driving-age population in 2009.
Over the 10 years the Missouri Attorney General’s Office has been tracking this data, it has been getting steadily worse, not better, for black drivers, with only one blip of improvement over the 10-year slide. Again, let’s hear this – not from some enraged blacktivist – but from the Missouri attorney general.
“These findings continue a disturbing trend for African-American drivers in Missouri. Specifically, the disparity indexes for African-American drivers have increased each of the last five years, exhibiting disparity indexes of 1.42 in 2005, 1.49 in 2006, 1.58 in 2007, 1.59 in 2008 and 1.62 in 2009,” Koster writes.
“In fact, the disparity rate for African-American drivers has gone down only one time in the history of the report, and then only slightly, to 1.34 in 2004 from 1.36 in 2003. Stated another way, the disparity index for African Americans has increased in nine of the last 10 years. The 2009 disparity rate of 1.62 compares to a rate of 1.27 ten years ago.”
Clearly, Koster’s confidence in the good will of Missouri law enforcement is unwarranted. If the State keeps tracking, publishing and analyzing the data, and the race-based disparities continue to worsen, then there is no genuine good will among law enforcement to clean up its act or overcome its biases.
Locally, as might be expected in a metropolitan area, things are bad but not as bad as they are overall in Missouri. Things are getting worse, however – and are as bad as they have been since Missouri started compiling this data 10 years ago. The disparity index for black drivers in the city of St. Louis was at 1.35 for 2009 – lower than the statewide rate of 1.62, but still unacceptably high. A disparity rate of 1.0 would mean no disparity – so this number remains 35 percent shy of that.
Worst in profiling
Koster reached out to The American with a call on Tuesday and pointed out some improvements in how the racial profiling data has been presented on the website. “What we have tried to do is turn an impenetrable amount of data into useful information,” Koster said.
He then provided a useful search hint that did just that. Koster suggested we search by agencies that do more than 5,000 traffic stops a year, to weed out the tiny rural hamlets. Searching the state by disparity index, from highest to lowest, then yields a sort of rogue’s gallery of racial profiling police departments of a certain size.
The City of St. Louis doesn’t even crack the top 40 – it comes up as the 41st worst place for black people to drive in Missouri, counting places that make 5,000 traffic stops or more per year. So, here they are – the 10 worst places to drive black in Missouri, and their disparity indices for black drivers:
1. Ladue (17.11)
2. Arnold (9.43)
3. Independence (5.83)
4. Town and Country (4.86)
5. Lee’s Summit (4.84)
6. Florissant (4.29)
7. Maryland Heights (3.71)
8. Overland (3.55)
9. Gladstone (3.50)
10. Blue Springs (3.43).
How about that Ladue? With a racial disparity index for black drivers at higher than 17? That’s almost twice as high as the disparity index for the second-worst offender, Arnold, in good old Jefferson County.
This data should be entered into evidence by attorneys for Larry White, a former chief of the Ladue Police Department who has sued the City of Ladue, claiming he lost his job after refusing to single out black drivers for traffic stops.
In his petition, Missouri Lawyers Media reported, White alleges Mayor Irene Holmes told him she wanted “those people” to be stopped and pulled out of their cars so that others would see what happened and avoid coming to Ladue. White said he understood “those people” to mean black drivers.
Reached by phone by Missouri Lawyers Media, Holmes declined to comment about the suit and hung up. Ladue’s attorney John Maupin said, “I can categorically deny that it involved any racial aspect whatsoever. ‘Those people’ referred to people who were breaking the law.”
Looking at the numbers, the Missouri attorney general pointed out that a disparity index of greater than 17.0 for Ladue meant “it was more than 1,700 percent more likely a black driver will be stopped in Ladue based upon the African-American population of Ladue.”
Larry White’s lawyer needs to introduce this evidence and put Koster on the witness stand!
Next 10 worst
Let’s lengthen our rogue’s gallery of Missouri’s worst racial profilers by another 10 towns. Metro St. Louis starts to look worse when we do this. Of the 10 worst police departments that make 5,000 stops or more a year, six are from the St. Louis area and four from Kansas City. Of these next 10, seven are from metro St. Louis, two from metro Kansas City and one (Webb City ) from Jasper County near Springfield:
11. Chesterfield (3.42)
12. Bridgeton (3.39)
13. Creve Coeur (3.31)
14. Clayton (3.23)
15. Webb City (3.16)
16. Ballwin (3.03)
17. Hazelwood (2.69)
18. North Kansas City (2.66)
19. St. Charles (2.61)
20. Platte County (2.54).
“With 642 law enforcement agencies conducting vehicle stops in Missouri, there is no single explanation why these disparities exist,” Koster notes in his analysis.
“This report provides statistical information so the data from each agency can be examined, and appropriate questions asked of those agencies.”
Koster has given us the data to ask a lot of “appropriate questions” of law enforcement in Missouri – especially, in our neck of the woods, of the police departments in Ladue, Arnold, Town and Country, Florissant, Maryland Heights, Overland, Chesterfield, Bridgeton, Creve Coeur, Clayton, Ballwin, Hazelwood and St. Charles.
The summary of statewide racial profiling data was provided by Scott H. Decker, professor and director of the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Arizona State University; Richard Rosenfeld, professor in the Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Missouri-St. Louis; and Jeffrey Rojek, assistant professor in the Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of South Carolina.
There were 13 law enforcement agencies that did not comply with the vehicle stops reporting law in 2009. An additional 44 agencies indicated they made no traffic stops during the year. The agencies filing reports recorded a total of 1,715,792 traffic stops, resulting in 115,777 searches and 84,309 arrests.
