Black drivers in Los Angeles are disproportionately stopped and searched by police officers at nearly three times the per capita rate of white drivers, according to a new report by the state’s Department of Justice.
While Blacks make up about 6% of the population, they accounted for 15% of all traffic stops across California in the second half of 2018, “while White and Latino drivers were stopped at rates proportional to their populations,” cbs8.com writes.
The report was released Thursday from the California Racial and Identity Profiling Advisory Board, an entity reportedly comprised of leaders from law enforcement, community groups and attorneys who are responsible for advising the Attorney General’s Office about racial profiling and traffic stops.
The annual report is required under the Racial and Identity Profiling Act of 2015, and, according to The Huffington Post, these latest findings highlight the racial statistics of about “1.8 million traffic stops from July through December 2018 from the eight largest law enforcement agencies in the state,” the outlet writes — including jurisdictions in Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego, Riverside, San Bernardino, and California Highway Patrol.
Officers targeted Black people the most due to “reasonable suspicion” but found contraband on white drivers at a higher rate than any other racial group. Asians as a whole were stopped the least when compared to Middle Eastern or South Asian drivers.
Source: Black drivers in California are stopped and searched at higher rates than whites
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