Commentary

Here we we go again with analysis with police traffic stop data. Police departments have to start doing a better job with conducting traffic stops! Ann Arbor Police Department (AAPD) if you are listening PLEASE pay attention. A quick look at the population demographics shows that Ann Arbor, MI has the following breakdown: White: 69.52%, Asian: 17.4%, and Black: 7.01% (6.07% other). Now AAPD there are these things called computers. All you have you do is get a program to record real-time the race of the person that AAPD officers stopping and issuing tickets to and then share that information with all the officers so that AAPD officers would know who they can issue tickets to. If an AAPD officer makes a traffic stop of an Asian person and when the officer returns to the vehicle to issue a ticket, if the Asian ticket percentage is greater than 17.4%, the officer shouldn’t issue the ticket. Simple! If the officer knows that there are several AAPD cars conducting traffic stops at the same time the officer can wait to see if the Asian ticket percentages decreases therefore allowing the officer to issue a ticket. Conversely if an AAPD has stopped a White person on a traffic stop and the officer notices that the ticket percentage for Whites are way below the 69.52% this might be a good opportunity to issue several traffic tickets in order to raise the White ticket percentage. Job well done!

Ann Arbor Police Department I’m trying to help you stay within the findings of the study. I wouldn’t want the fine government leaders of Ann Arbor, MI to think that the answer of a more equitable way of traffic enforcement would be to have civilians perform the duties of traffic enforcement. Or to restrict the Ann Arbor Police Department to the enforcement of ONLY some of the State Vehicle and Traffic Laws, “just the unbiased laws”. Or tohave all of the AAPD officers go through some type of training that will make the AAPD officers treat the motoring public in a more equitable way.

There are 2 major flaws with the SMART Analysis (which is available from a link on it’s website). First is in it’s conclusion:

“These disparities were not uniform across racial categories nor across various Reasons for Contact. Some of the largest disparities identified in this analysis involve African-American male drivers for stops initiated for Equipment Violations (which occurred 2.41x more likely than would be expected) as well as for Searches after the initial stop (which occurred between 5.4x to 3.65x more often than would be expected). Despite these significant disparities, the above results place AAPD traffic stops generally in line, neither dramatically better or worse, than similar analyses.”

Again the analysis rests against the population and the conclusion points out that AAPD is not “dramatically better or worse against similar analyses”. So I guess AAPD is doing…..GOOD?

The second flaw is that this type of analysis treats the data as if “ALL THINGS ARE EQUAL”. This type of approach disregards all other elements of the stop that could impact the officer’s decision to write the traffic ticket or search the vehicle such as the condition of the vehicle, the interaction between the officer and the driver/passengers, history of the driver/passengers, and plain view evidence that may impact the traffic stop.

The result is a narrow interpretation from the study that the AAPD is biased with it’s traffic enforcement. Think to how AAPD conducts traffic stops. AAPD probably has about 80 officers (patrol, traffic & Sergeants) that routinely conducts traffic stops. Are they ALL racially biased? I doubt it. Is the training they receive biased to make them write tickets in a biased manner? Probably not, but the AAPD administration should review the training to make sure it isn’t biased. How do AAPD write tickets? AAPD officers make traffic stops from officer discretion as to which cars to stop and who to ticket, they probably conduct checkpoints from traffic complaints, there are probably 911 call for real-time traffic complaints, and traffic accidents. So there are some traffic incidents where the officer selects the reason for the traffic stop and other times when the public influences the officer as to which vehicles should be stopped.

Then there are several reasons why an AAPD officer would issue a traffic ticket. The officer has discretion under some circumstances, the officer may have to issue the ticket in accordance to AAPD policy or State law, there is the interaction between the officer and the driver/passenger, other factor such as the driver’s criminal history, driving record or police contact history, there may be a warrant, an arrest or the ticket may be needed for probable cause. There may be several violations that can be issued and the officer may issue one ticket, some tickets or tickets for ALL of the violations. Do the data reflect all of these decisions?

The PROBLEM is that critics believe that at anytime AAPD stop data is looked at all the STOPS, SEARCHES, TICKETS ISSUED should look like White: 69.52%, Asian: 17.4%, and Black: 7.01% (6.07% other). Even though traffic stops are conducted by 80 plus different AAPD officers, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, in response to 100’s of reason and circumstances.

Good luck AAPD. What would be helpful is for an academic to take this study and reanalyze the data considering some of these other factors mentioned above to see how they affect this traffic enforcement study.