Justice Department Study Reveals Higher Scrutiny By Police Toward Blacks, Hispanics

Jet, March 26, 2001

Blacks and Hispanics are twice as likely to report the use of force in encounters with police, said a report that also showed Black drivers were more likely than Whites to be stopped, handcuffed or ticketed than Whites.

According to the Justice Department's Bureau of Justice Statistics, a little over 12 percent of Black drivers were pulled over in 1999, compared to 10.4 percent of Whites and 8.8 percent Hispanics.

Black and Hispanic drivers were

twice as likely to be physically searched or have their vehicles searched and ticketed more than Whites.

Two percent of Blacks and Hispanics who had face-to-face encounters with police in 1999 reported force or the threat of force, compared to just under 1 percent among Whites.

However, the Justice Department report said that while the 1999 survey of 80,000 "contacts" shows that Black drivers are stopped more often than Whites that "is not necessarily evidence of racial profiling."

"To form evidence of racial profiling the survey would have to show that ... Blacks were no more likely than Whites to violate traffic laws and police pulled over Blacks at a higher rate than Whites," stated the report.

Overall, the study showed that 21 percent of citizens had encounters with police, and force was involved in about 1 percent of those cases.

About one in four said they did something to provoke officers. The majority of those who experienced force were males younger than 32.

The survey was conducted over the last six months of the year.