Racial Profiling in the LAPD
In any individual case, it's difficult to prove that racial profiling motivated a traffic stop. Law enforcement agencies seize upon that difficulty to argue that racial profiling doesn't occur. That was the response of the Los Angeles Police Department to a report (pdf) by Ian Ayres and Jonathan Borowsky for the ACLU of Southern California. Among the report's significant findings:
Per 10,000 residents, the black stop rate is 3,400 stops higher than the white stop rate, and the Hispanic stop rate is almost 360 stops higher. Relative to stopped whites, stopped blacks are 127% more likely and stopped Hispanics are 43% more likely to be frisked.
Despite the absence of empirical evidence that black or Hispanic drivers are more likely to violate traffic laws than white drivers, the LAPD refuses to acknowledge that the statistics reveal an underlying problem of racial profiling. [more ...]
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