Highways to harassment

Latino and Blacks are three times more likely to be searched during traffic stops

If DPS stops you on Arizona’s highways and you are Native American,  Latino or Black, you are about three times more likely to be searched than Whites.
Yet Whites were more likely to be carrying drugs or contraband than people of color.

What’s wrong with this equation?

The American Civil Liberties Union says an analysis of DPS stops between July 1, 2006 and June 30, 2007 shows racial profiling by Department of Public Safety officers.

The study also makes the case to pass legislation requiring agencies like DPS, sheriffs departments, and police to keep detailed records on who they are stopping, and for long, said ACLU officials in April. These records would make police agencies more accountable to identifying racial profiling trends and fixing problems.

Fred Solop analyzed the data for ACLU. He’s director of the Social Research Laboratory at Northern Arizona University. He was a consultant for the prosecution in the 2001 lawsuit that prompted the collecting of racial descriptions of those DPS stopped and searched.

Statistics from 200,000 traffic stops on Arizona highways showed that African-Americans and Hispanics were 21⁄2 times more likely than Whites to be searched, even though Whites were more likely to have contraband. Native Americans were 3 1⁄4 times more likely to be searched.

People of color, including Middle Easterners, were consistently stopped for longer periods of time than Whites.

“Based on this disparity in the post-stop outcome, we have to conclude that Hispanics and African-Americans, people of color generally, are being treated differently on Arizona interstates than Whites,”  Solop said