DURHAM: Traffic-stop numbers show racial bias across North Carolina | Durham County | NewsObserver.com

26.10.13

Durham’s statistics reflect a statewide situation Baumgartner found when he and graduate student Derek Epp analyzed data from 13.2 million North Carolina traffic stops, involving 13.5 million drivers and passengers, between Jan. 1, 2000, and June 14, 2011.

In 1999, the North Carolina Legislature passed one of the nation’s first laws requiring law-enforcement agencies to collect and report racial and ethnic data on traffic stops.

However, Baumgartner said, in all that time, “As far as I know ... no analysis has ever been published or sent to the legislature. So we did the analysis.”

Whites constituted 68.5 percent of the state’s 2010 population, blacks 21.5 percent and Hispanics 7.92. Baumgartner and Epp found, though, that:

• 30 percent of the traffic stops involved blacks, 21.5 percent whites, 7.92 percent Hispanics;

• 4.86 percent of blacks’ stops led to searches; 2.74 percent of whites’, 5.39 percent of Hispanics;

• 4.5 percent of blacks’ stops led to arrests, 2.8 percent of whites’, 5.93 percent of Hispanics’.

The numbers, Baumgartner said, show that a black motorist is 77 percent more likely to be searched following a traffic stop than a white; a Hispanic is 96 percent more likely to be searched.

Read the full article …

Dispatch: Aboriginal Press Media Group | Permalink | [26.10.13] | 0 comments

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