This infographic, developed by Nowsourcing, illustrates the likelihood of being pulled over by police officers based on race and gender using statistics collected in a 2011 Bureau of Justice Statistics study.
The nationwide findings were released in 2014 and found that 13 percent of black drivers were stopped at least once by police. The figures showed 10 percent for white and hispanic drivers. As the Washington Post reports, “since this only captures whether drivers were stopped once, the disparity could be much bigger if black drivers were stopped more frequently than white drivers.”
In a more recent study, the LA Times reports, “African Americans and Latinos — especially men — are far more likely than are non-Latino whites to be stopped and questioned by police, the new research finds.”
The latest study, which was not sponsored by any government organization or activist group, was published in the BMJ Journal for Injury Prevention in July 2016. The statistics come at a time when police brutality against minorities, black men in particular, has ignited a national firestorm. The LA Times says, “the research weaved together data from several repositories to generate national estimates of police-inflicted injuries and deaths and to glean insights into behavioral patterns in law enforcement.”
Racial profiling is real, but proving implicit bias is extremely hard.
A class action lawsuit was filed Tuesday accusing 13 St. Louis County towns of “extorting money” from poor black residents through traffic fines. Thirteen plaintiffs are requesting changes to existing policies, compensation and a statement from the court to prove the police practices are indeed unconstitutional.
“You know, you have your siblings in the car with you, coming from a family event, and you know in the back of your mind that if I was to get pulled over, I could get taken to jail,” Quinton Thomas, the lead plaintiff, told NBC News.
This announcement came on the two-year anniversary of Michael Brown’s death in nearby Ferguson, and one day before the Department of Justice released its findings of widespread racial bias by police in Baltimore.
