Beyond Profiling: The Institutional Sources of Racial Disparities in Policing

Abstract

: American policing faces a crisis of legitimacy. A key source of this crisis is a widespread police practice commonly endorsed by police leaders to fight crime. This is the investigatory stop, used to check out people who seem suspicious and to seize illegal drugs and guns and make arrests. Using data from an original scientific survey of drivers in the Kansas City metropolitan area, the authors show that racial disparities in police stops are concentrated in investigatory vehicle stops. In these stops, but not others, officers disproportionately stop African Americans and question and search them. The overwhelming majority of people stopped in this way are innocent, and the experience causes psychological harm and erodes trust in and cooperation with the police. Many of the most controversial police shootings during the past two years occurred in these stops. Reforming this practice is an essential step toward restoring trust in the police. Practitioner Points• Although evidence of their effectiveness is not clear, investigatory police stops (commonly using minor violations as a pretext for a more searching inquiry) are widely used by local police departments as a crimefighting tactic.• Most people stopped in investigatory stops are innocent, yet they are subjected to intrusive questioning (e.g., "Why are you in the neighborhood?") and searches, leading to feelings of fear and of being "violated." • Overuse of investigatory police stops erodes trust in, and cooperation with, the police, especially among African Americans, who are especially likely to be stopped.• There is insufficient oversight of the practice, as many investigatory stops yield no citation and so are not presently recorded or reported.• To enable oversight of this practice, law enforcement agencies should require officers to record and report all stops they make, including the race and ethnicity of the driver and whether a warning or citation is issued; these data should be analyzed to check for patterns of racial disparity. Surveys of satisfaction with police services should include questions regarding residents' experiences in police stops, including stops for minor violations. Charles R. Epp Steven Maynard-Moody Donald Haider-MarkelUniversity of Kansas P olicing in the United States is in crisis, a "perfect storm" of popular protest and media coverage of egregious violations (Weitzer 2015 , 475). Since the protests in Ferguson, Missouri, over the shooting death of Michael Brown on August 9, 2014, protests have erupted in Baltimore, Charlotte, Cincinnati, Chicago, Cleveland, Los Angeles, Madison, Minneapolis-St. Paul, New York City, Oakland, St. Louis, Tulsa, and such smaller places as Hempstead, Texas; North Charleston, South Carolina; Pasco, Washington; and Stonewall, Mississippi. The relationship between the police and these communities, so essential to public safety and the rights and dignity of members of the public, is strained, if not broken. Nor is the problem isolated locally. A recent national survey found that 84 percent...

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