Traffic stop data for Columbia, Boone County shows only small decreases in disparities

Black drivers continue to be pulled over at a disproportionate rate in Columbia and Boone County, according to data in the 2020 Missouri Vehicle Stops Report from the Missouri Attorney General’s Office.

Black people make up 10.3 percent of Columbia’s driving-age population but were the subjects of 35.2 percent of Columbia Police Department traffic stops in 2020. That means Black drivers were pulled over 3.41 times as much as expected based on population. This number is marginally lower than the rate in 2019, which at 3.51 was the largest disparity index on record for the Police Department.

In Boone County, Black drivers make up 8.4 percent of the driving population, but represented 26 percent of traffic stops. That’s nearly 3.1 times more stops than expected. That disparity rate was also down from a Sheriff’s Department high of 3.53 in 2019.

The 2020 report showed a disparity index of 1.63 for traffic stops involving Black drivers among all law enforcement agencies in the state that submitted data. The annual report has been released by the Attorney General’s Office since 2000.

Columbia Police Chief Geoff Jones created the Vehicle Stop Committee in 2019. It advises Jones and makes policy recommendations to ensure more fairness in traffic stops. A Police Department spokesman said Jones would be available to discuss the report on Friday.

Don Love is a member of the Vehicle Stop Committee. He has been active in past discussions about racial disparities in traffic stops and said he was hoping Columbia had improved more.

“The traffic stop rates are disproportionate, and it’s especially disappointing when there are so many people trying to reduce that,” Love said.

Love said the committee finalized and sent a recommendation on traffic stops to Jones in March. He said it called for additional checkoffs for police officers to fill out after traffic stops, including the reason for a stop, types of moving violations, categories of speeding and more. He said the goal is to gain more information that could help identify disparities and possible discrimination.

One of the recommendations was to provide more information on investigative stops.

The 2020 report showed that 10.4% of the stops Columbia police officers made involving Black drivers were for investigative reasons. That number was 5% for Boone County sheriff’s deputies.

Love said numbers on investigative stops were first added to the Vehicle Stops Report in 2004 because there were concerns that police officers were using minor infractions to stop drivers. He said the addition lacked enough information to prove discrimination was happening. He hopes adding more checkoffs to reports on those stops will help.

Outsiders like the Vehicle Stops Committee and other advocacy groups can’t prove discrimination if they lack the necessary information, Love said. He thinks police departments need to gather their internal data and look for possible discrimination themselves.

Law enforcement agencies are given a chance to make a statement about the report and its findings. The Boone County Sheriff’s Department’s statement cited its efforts to “evaluate enforcement activities, disparity numbers and complaints” to search for areas where it can improve. It made no mention of the disproportionate numbers found in the report.

Sheriff’s Capt. Brian Leer seconded the department’s statement. He said the department is constantly evaluating its practices, and deputies routinely undergo training to avoid bias and profiling.

Leer said the disparities index in the report factors in too little information on traffic stops. He said poverty and socioeconomic disparities play a large part in the disproportionate number of traffic stops for communities of color.

The Columbia Police Department’s statement discussed data collection issues and the “significant decrease in stops” in 2020 compared to past years due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The statement also made no mention of the disproportionate stop rates for Black drivers.

The 2020 report itself calls the disparity indices “highly problematic.” For one thing, it fails to account for the number of white versus minority motorists in a given population. It also is a poor measure for comparing communities with highly variable populations.

The report also mentions other factors that can contribute to disparities, including policing strategies and the rate of offenses among ethnic groups.

“Law enforcement officials make strategic choices on where and when to police that may disproportionately impact various racial/ethnic groups,” the report says. “Strategies such as concentrating patrols in areas within a city with higher crime rates, could lead to a disproportionate impact if that area has a higher concentration of a racial/ethnic group than the jurisdiction as a whole.”

Also, the report says, “the correlation of dynamics such as economic or social disadvantage with race or ethnicity may lead to differences in rates of real offending. If there are real differences in offending rates, traffic stops should theoretically increase or decrease accordingly.”

Love said keeping an open and positive line of communication with the police is important, but he does think they need to take more responsibility for the disproportionate numbers found in the report. He said the department needs to let the public know that they’re “going to get to the bottom of it” and make change if discrimination is found.