Pubdate: Sat, 07 Oct 2000
Source: New York Times (NY)
Copyright: 2000 The New York Times Company
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Author: Jim Yardley

STUDIES FIND RACE DISPARITIES IN TEXAS TRAFFIC STOPS

HOUSTON, Oct. 6  - Black and Hispanic motorists across Texas are more than 
twice as likely as non-Hispanic whites to be searched during traffic stops 
while black drivers in certain rural areas of the state are also far more 
likely to be ticketed, according to two studies examining possible racial 
profiling.

The investigations by the National Association for the Advancement of 
Colored People and by The Dallas Morning News were released this week and 
brought an immediate challenge from the Texas Department of Public Safety. 
State officials described the Morning News study as flawed, citing other 
statistics in denying that the agency practiced racial profiling.

The investigations were undertaken after complaints in Texas and other states.

Gary Bledsoe, state president of the N.A.A.C.P., said he believed that the 
two reports proved that minority drivers were singled out by many law 
enforcement officers. "The data are very clear," said Mr. Bledsoe, an 
Austin lawyer who said he had been stopped but not ticketed nearly 20 times 
during the past decade. "This is a clear indication of racial profiling. 
It's definitely happening."

The two studies used the same raw data but focused on different time 
periods and used different experts to tabulate the numbers. The studies 
centered on two fundamental issues: the number of minorities ticketed and 
the number of minorities searched during traffic stops.

The Morning News, which published its investigation on Wednesday, examined 
roughly 895,000 traffic tickets written by state troopers last year. The 
figures were analyzed by a University of Texas mathematics professor.

Looking at the state as a whole, the newspaper concluded that blacks and 
Hispanics received tickets at rates that actually were proportional to 
their driving-age populations. But disparities emerged when the study 
examined different regions of the state. In many rural counties blacks were 
nearly twice as likely as non-Hispanic whites to be ticketed. Of the 193 
counties analyzed, blacks received more tickets than expected in 84 
counties. There were some counties where whites received a 
higher-than-expected number of tickets, but in those cases the disparity 
was not as great.

James B. Francis, board chairman of the Department of Public Safety, said 
the Morning News analysis was flawed because it compared the race and 
number of ticketed drivers with the local population where the stop 
occurred. But, he said, it did not consider that the drivers might be from 
elsewhere. "I'm not going to start a massive investigation unless and until 
there is some indication that something is going on," Mr. Francis said.

On Tuesday, Mr. Bledsoe released the N.A.A.C.P. findings at a news 
conference in Austin. The report, prepared by two professors of economics 
and statistics, analyzed 65,000 traffic stops from March and found that 
blacks were searched twice as often as non-Hispanic whites while Hispanics 
were searched two and a half times as often. The study also concluded that 
search rates were even higher for minority males with Hispanic men four 
times as likely as non-Hispanic whites to be searched and black men two and 
a half times as likely.

Mike Cox, a public safety spokesman, declined to comment and steered any 
questions to a report about traffic stops posted this week on the agency's 
Web site. In March, the department began collecting data on traffic stops, 
requesting that officers collect information like a driver's race and sex. 
The initiative began after the public safety department suspended seven 
officers in East Texas for racial insensitivity. After this incident, Mr. 
Francis, the board chairman, declared there would be "zero tolerance" for 
discrimination within the ranks.

The statistics on the internal report, which are based on five months of 
data from this year, reveal two primary findings, one suggesting that 
racial profiling does not occur and the other suggesting that it does. 
First, the state report found that non-Hispanic whites constituted a higher 
rate of overall traffic stops (68.12 percent) than their estimated 
statewide population (60.69 percent). Blacks and Hispanics, the report 
states, are actually stopped at lower rates than their overall populations.

But the state statistics also show that blacks and Hispanics are twice as 
likely as non-Hispanic whites to be searched during stops, a finding 
similar to those of the N.A.A.C.P. and The Morning News. The state report 
explained the high number of Hispanics who were searched as a byproduct of 
the traffic of illegal immigrants and drugs from Mexico.
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MAP posted-by: Jo-D