Minorities stopped more often
By Joy Anderson
The Forum - 07/29/2003

Latinos and blacks were stopped, searched and arrested more often than Caucasians during traffic violations in Moorhead in 2002, shows an analysis of a Police Department study.

But police may not have used racial profiling while making stops, said the report by Mark Hansel, professor of sociology and criminal justice at Minnesota State University Moorhead.

Traffic stops could have been caused not by ethnicity, but by factors such as vehicle condition and driver behavior, which were not tracked, said the report.

In addition, results may have been skewed by the small numbers of minorities who were pulled over, said the report, released Monday.

Moorhead officials are taking the study results seriously and plan to use the information while designing officer training, said City Manager Bruce Messelt. He also said the report isn't proof of a major problem.

"I sure hope we don't overreact and find one line in here and think we have a major crisis," he said.

The report analyzed 8,009 forms filled out by Moorhead police officers each time they pulled over a driver for a traffic violation last year, noting ethnicity, why the driver was stopped and the outcome of the stop.

The information will be used in a statewide report to be released next year.

In the meantime, Moorhead officers will continue to collect traffic stop information through the end of the year, to gather a larger sample, said Police Chief Grant Weyland.

The Hansel analysis shows all other ethnic groups are stopped a few percentage points more frequently than Caucasians, compared to their proportion in the, population.

But when the average number of miles driven by a member of an ethnic group is factored in, blacks were stopped nearly five times more than whites per miles driven, and Latinos and Asians were stopped 1.4 times more than whites, using numbers from a U.S. Department of Transportation study.

Because American Indians drive more than members of other groups, they were stopped one-third less than whites, when miles driven per group were examined.

Several city officials questioned whether the national averages for miles driven -- and thus the more startling statistics -- were applicable in Moorhead.

"I think a lot of ethnic groups live in major urban areas, so the number of miles driven may be different than they are here," Weyland said.

The report also showed American Indians, Latinos and blacks were about 10 percent more likely to be arrested than the overall population during stops.

At the same time, Latinos were most likely to be pulled over and receive neither a citation, warning or arrest. Data that could show whether or not that statistic means Latinos are targets of unfounded police harassment were not collected by
officers, the report said.

The report also showed that one in three American Indians stopped, along with one in five blacks and Latinos stopped, were subjects of a search. That's compared to one in 12 Caucasians.

Officers knew the ethnicity of Latinos before they were pulled over nearly one-quarter of the time, the study said. That was the only group for which results were significantly higher than the average of 18.3 percent.

And when officers knew drivers were Latinos before they were pulled over, they were treated differently than other drivers: They were subject to vehicle searches 38 percent of the time, compared to 13 percent overall, the study said.

The report isn't surprising, but it does raise many questions, said Councilman and Human Rights Commission member Greg Lemke.

"We need to do some further research, get some further explanation as to why those numbers are different," he said.

Readers can reach Forum reporter Joy Anderson at (701) 241-5556

Profiling studies wanted
By Joy Anderson
The Forum - 07/30/2003


Tammie Yak doesn’t need a report to tell her about racial profiling.

She’s heard stories from people who feel they were targeted by police officers because of race.

“It seems possibly things could be getting better, but that’s because people are not reporting incidents,” said Yak, self-sufficiency coordinator for Cultural Diversity Resources. “I have individuals coming in all the time who have been racially profiled.”

A day after Moorhead released a report exploring the possibility of racial profiling during its traffic stops, advocates for minority groups called for more information to be collected and community dialogues tobe started.

“I think it’s a good opportunity for the Police Department to actually do some community accountability, how they’re going to change,” said Duke Schempp, director of the People Escaping Poverty Project, who said he would like to see a forum between community groups and police officials.

The analysis, based on information gathered by Moorhead police during every traffic stop in 2002 for a statewide study, said blacks and Latinos were pulled over, searched and arrested more often than whites. But it also said that’s not proof of racial profiling by police officers.

Information that could have answered the central question -- whether or not Moorhead police engaged in racial profiling
-- was not gathered in the study, said Mark Hansel, professor of sociology and criminal justice at Minnesota State University Moorhead, who was paid $575 by the city to do the analysis.

Other causes -- including outdated, inaccurate census data or unreported factors like driver behavior and vehicle condition -- could have produced the study’s results, he said.

“It’s inconclusive because the data collected don’t answer the questions that need to be answered -- by design,” he said.

There are ways to get that information, but they’re expensive, Hansel said.

He would like to see the Police Department continue to collect information and expand the kinds of data it documents.

The department is examining doing just that, said Police Chief Grant Weyland.

Right now, the report can draw no hard-and-fast conclusions, Hansel said.

“There’s something in that report for everybody, if you want to spin it and you want to find evidence for or against profiling,” Hansel said.

Like Yak, Sandra Berlin thought there was a problem before reading the report --she hears almost daily stories about police treating minorities differently.

“I know there’s a lot more going on thanwhat’s coming out,” said Berlin, field organizer for the Minnesota Indian Ecumenical Ministry.

She helped organize the Justice Circle group two years ago, when a report to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights said minorities were arrested in disproportionate numbers in Moorhead.

Moorhead’s police department volunteered for the state-wide study in response to that 2001 report, so Berlin feels her group has made some progress, despite the report’s results.

“It’s a good thing if they are looking at it and trying to find answers,” Berlin said. “Of course it’s going to take a while to see any difference.”

Readers can reach Forum reporter Joy Anderson at (701) 241-5556