I don’t think people should be stopped and ticketed simply for DWB. But I think it is a serious mistake to just assume that the number of traffic tickets has to reflect the same racial proportion as the general population. (Even the cop trying to defend his department here relied on the assertion that they get a lot of drivers from other communities). Unless there is actual evidence that black people are being ticketed at a disproportionate rate as compared to the number of traffic offences that they actually commit, it is utterly meaningless to just point to the number of total tickets.
Blacks are also arrested for murder and other violent crimes at rates far exceeding the general population. Does this show racial profiling in murder arrests? (I seem to recall various liberals on this board claiming that in fact it does.) I think this attitude towards traffic tickets is as silly as it is towards murder cases.
Which is not to preclude the possibility that in fact it does represent some form of racial profiling. But it cannot be used as evidence of such.
I would say that what the raw numbers “mean” is “look further”. I agree that the raw numbers of tickets issued may or may not indicate a problem with profiling. However I do feel that a substantial difference in tickets between two hardly monolithic groups across an entire state does indicate a need for further investigation.
It’s really tough to look further. New Jersey tried it by setting up radar vans with cameras. Basically, they randomly took pictures of speeders (>15mph over the limit), then had a panel conclude the race of the driver via the picture. When the data said that blacks sped more often than whites, the conclusions were derided, and more people were called racists.
I spent a lot of time looking at the NJ data and methodology, and couldn’t come up with any siginificant problems or a better way to do it. I’ll see if I can find a link to that original study.
It’s certainly true that raw numbers don’t tell the whole story. Unfortunately, neither does the link provided by the OP.
Jack McDevitt and Lisa Bailey, who both work for the Northeastern University Institute on Race and Justice and who were involved in producing the study, wrote a piece in the Boston Globe in which they expanded on the resuts of their study. In particular, they noted:
McDevitt and Bailey’s piece was designed not just to offer some general observations about the issue of racial profiling, but was specifically in response to an investigation that was carried out by the Globe on disparities in traffic tickets issued in the Boston area.
The newspaper examined 166,000 tickets and warnings issued in Massachusetts over a two-month period. Some of the findings are instructive, and give much more food for thought than a simple examination of tickets issued:
So, while raw data on the number of tickets issued to different groups may not provide much to go on, i think it’s considerably more troubling when minorities get more tickets than whites when stopped for the same offence. Actually, it’s also troubling that men get more tickets than women when stopped for the same offence.
I’m sorry i can’t provide links, but i found this information using a Lexis/Nexis search, and you need a subscription to gain access to the databate.
If anyone has Lexis/Nexis, you can find this easily by searching in “General News,” specifying the Boston Globe, and using search terms “profiling,” “speeding,” and “traffic.”
In the interests of clarification though, I should point out that Jack McDevitt and Lisa Bailey did not, as you state, write “a piece in the Boston Globe in which they expanded on the resuts of their study” - their study was not completed at the time (8/03) - as noted in the OP, it was released yesterday. What they did was write an Op-Ed piece in support of the Boston Globe’s study that you refer to in your second quote.
So I don’t think your (apparent) complaint that the linked OP article misrepresented the study is a valid one - unless you can show that this study too looked at tickets vs. warnings.
In sum, the Boston Globe’s study appears to be a valid and meaningful one (they themselves note some qualifiers, but it is certainly pretty strongly suggestive of a disparity), while the one released yesterday remains an invalid one.
Cheesesteak, I’d be interested if you could find a link to the study that you refer to - I looked around a bit and couldn’t find any reference to it.
I would be interested to see whether and how a higher percentage of female police officers would change the gender disparity with regard to getting tickets. I believe most police departments are still by far predominantly male.
You’re right, of course. What i should have written was that they were commenting on the Globe’s study, not on their own which, as you say, had not even been completed.
And i didn’t mean to suggest that the article linked in the OP misrepresented the study–only that it didn’t tell the full story of racial profiling possibilities.
I can’t agree with this at all–i think you’re making way too big a leap.
Sure, the study might be inconclusive, but that’s a far cry from being “invalid.” Even the article you linked to in the OP makes no claim that anyone is using this study (yet) to accuse police of racial profiling, and that article also contains quotes from various officials stating that the study simply provides a basis for discussion of the issue.
Furthermore, the IRJ Website announcing the release of the report specifically states that the figures being released are a “preliminary set of tabulations,” and are
They are quite open about the fact that there are certain questions that the data cannot answer. That the IRJ is aware of this was already apparent in the earlier piece written by McDevitt and Baile, and the current summary on the website restates the case, saying:
To call the study “invalid” is to presume that the data will be used for illegitimate purposes. The fact that the data collected need to be interpreted correctly in order to form a basis for conclusions and future actions does not in any way invalidate the study.
No luck, may have been lost when the boards went down. I’ll check to see if i can find the original study.
That said, mhendo’s post is certainly food for thought. Certainly seems to indicate bias, not just against minorities, but against men as well. Better argument than just a higher number of tickets vs. population %, it’s higher chance of getting a ticket vs. a warning, big difference.
Well I think its pretty clear that that is what the study intends to support - I can’t think of any other reason for such a study. The AP and the people quoted in the article also interpreted this as being the (inconclusive) implication of the study.
I am aware that they loaded on some qualifiers. Nonetheless, even a report filled with qualifiers can have the effect of making the apparent implication to be sort of a baseline hypothesis, with the burden of proof shifting to the other side to explain it away. (As an example, the cop that I quoted in the OP who suggested that the drivers in his community did not reflect the ethnic makeup of the population at large). My point here is that there is no need to explain anything, since there is no basis for a null hypothesis that assumes that ticket rates should be equal. There are cultural, socio-economic, and demographic differences between the different groups, and looking at the numbers of tickets per capita is not merely inconclusive as regards the issue of profiling, but it is not even suggestive of anything, absent reason to believe that the numbers should be similar.
I agree, as noted earlier.
That said, it is possible for this too to be accounted for by other factors. In particular, it is possible that due to the history of enmity and distrust between minority communities and the police, that minorities are more likely to adopt an argumentative and confrontational attitude when pulled over. And if there is one sure way to make sure you get a ticket and not a warning it is adopting an argumentative and confrontational attitude.
But this is rather speculative. So I agree in this case that the results are strongly suggestive of actual bias, absent support for some alternative rationale.