After an officer kills a Black person in the Twin Cities, police are often forced into undertaking some effort at reform. After killing Jamar Clark, Thurman Blevins, and now George Floyd, Minneapolis police were pushed to begin collecting data on the race of people injured by an officer, expedite the release of body camera footage and ban chokeholds.
But after things settle down — and even after certain policy changes are put in place — some issues don’t get better. And sometimes they get worse.
[image_caption]Jeronimo Yanez[/image_caption]
After the killing, Yanez was fired from the department, though he was also acquitted of criminal charges brought against him by Ramsey County prosecutors. At the same time, St. Anthony initiated a series of policing reforms: overhauling the department’s policy manual, putting together a plan for fair policing, and — at the behest of residents and advocates — agreeing to collect and report data on the race of people they pull over in traffic stops.
And yet, in the years since Castile’s death, St. Anthony police have continued to pull over Black motorists at disproportionate rates compared to their white, Asian and Latino counterparts. In fact, since the department started collecting data in 2017, the share of Black people pulled over has increased each year.
A killing, and a departmental shift
On the evening of July 6, 2016, Yanez pulled over a car with Castile, his girlfriend, Diamond Reynolds, and Reynolds’ 4-year-old daughter on Larpenteur Avenue in Falcon Heights, which the St. Anthony police department was contracted to patrol.
In a radio transmission by Yanez, he said he pulled over the car because he thought Castile fit the description of a suspect of a robbery and because a brake light was out. Reynolds streamed the immediate aftermath of the shooting on Facebook. By the next day, the video had been viewed over 2 million times, sparking outrage and protests throughout the country. Yanez was later arrested and charged on second-degree manslaughter and felony weapons charges and, in 2017, went on trial in Ramsey County.
Within weeks of the killing, Falcon Heights, St. Anthony and Lauderdale residents, along with local activists, began meeting and discussing changes to the St. Anthony Police Department.
[image_credit]Courtesy Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension/Handout via REUTERS[/image_credit][image_caption]A still photo taken from a dashcam video shows the July 2016 police shooting of Philando Castile by officer Jeronimo Yanez.[/image_caption]
Casey said research shows that more public cooperation in creating police practices helps keep communities, and the police that serve them, safer. “The training that has been made available to our police officers in the last several years has been very well received and has greatly built our capacity, yet we cannot help but think we can do better,” said Casey, adding that the city believes there is “room to grow” with better crisis intervention training, and that police seek community-wide input.
Explaining the numbers
But the largest shift in operations impacted how the city policed motorists. Instead of viewing traffic as a place to stop people and make arrests, argued advocates, the department should be most concerned with maintaining safety.
St. Anthony police agreed and vowed to make traffic safety — instead of enforcement — a priority, with officers looking less to stop drivers in order to hand out any possible citation than to focus on stopping unsafe driving that leads to traffic fatalities, like speeding or running a stop sign. The data collected since 2017 shows evidence that the department’s efforts are working. Though moving violations stops (for speeding, distracted driving, stop light or stop sign violations and seatbelt violations) are up in recent years, vehicle violation stops (for expired registration, broken or illegal equipment) and investigative stops (for unlicensed vehicle owners, warrant or stolen vehicle hits, suspicious activity) are down.
[image_caption]Chief Jon Mangseth[/image_caption]
In addition to the focus on traffic safety, many of those who met with department leadership in the wake of Castile’s killing also asked the city to start tracking details about each traffic stop, and St. Anthony police began doing so in 2017. The data includes information on the race of drivers pulled over and the reason for the stop, and is compiled in reports released each year.
St. Anthony Village and Lauderdale, which the department also patrols, are “pass-through” cities, says Mangseth, meaning that the traffic there is largely drivers from neighboring cities, like Minneapolis and St. Paul, as well as Roseville, Columbia Heights and New Brighton. According to St. Anthony police, the percentage of traffic stops that involved drivers from either St. Anthony or Lauderdale, on average, only made up 10 percent of all stops. The rest are from adjacent cities.
While St. Anthony is more than 77 percent white and Lauderdale is more than 70 percent white, the combined racial demographics of those two municipalities and the adjacent cities — Minneapolis, St. Paul, Roseville, New Brighton, Columbia Heights and Falcon Heights — is 57 percent white, 17 percent Black 11 percent Asian and 9 percent Hispanic or Latinx.
In 2017, however, 28 percent of all traffic stops conducted by St. Anthony police involved Black drivers. In 2018, that figure went up to 32 percent. And in 2019, it climbed further still, reaching 34 percent. What’s more, the disparities didn’t apply to all people of color. Asian and Latinx drivers were stopped at lower rates than they’re represented in the population of St. Anthony and its surrounding cities.
Mangseth said he doesn’t know why the numbers are “drawing out” the way they do. “I wish I had a simple, point-on response for you,” said Mangseth, and he said the police department is working to shrink the gap.
Though Mangseth said he “wants to be part of the solution,” he doesn’t think racism is the problem. He says there are many “variables and dynamics” that lead to the statistical outcomes. “I just don’t operate under the premise that the police profession has this embedded racism,” he said.
Since the 2016 killing of Castile, Mangseth says the department has carried out multiple initiatives and actively pursues goals for procedural justice, which people should also pay attention to in looking at the department. “We’re stopping a disproportionate amount of people of color,” he said. “But how do we measure things on that other side, as well?”
So if the police are recording the reason for each stop it would have helpful to know if the reasons Blacks are being stopped are any different from whites.
“I just don’t operate from the premise that the police profession has this embedded racism.”
That certainly sounds like another way of saying, “See no evil. . . ” Perhaps if Chief Jon Mangseth operated from statistics instead of operating from his world view, he would be able to find out what “variables and dynamics” are leading to the disparate numbers.
This entire argument that blacks are being singled out by the police should be looked at in a different way. And if this article would have done this I believe the facts show that blacks are not being singled out. What did the driver do to get stopped in the first place?
What did George Floyd do for the police to stop him? Counterfeit money and drugs. What did the guy in Kenosha get stopped for? The girlfriend called the police because he came to her house, ( she had a restraining order against him ) stole her keys and then refused to stop when the police demanded he stop. A stun gun wouldn’t even stop him.
At some point black activists have got to include their behavior into the narrative. But they won’t. And Democratic politicians won’t either. I am not condoning killing a suspect by any means. But to say they are getting singled out on race alone is simply not true.
Where did you get your information about the reason for Jacob Blake being stopped? I have not seen that information anywhere else and would like to know the source.
Fallacious reasoning.
We would have to add:
1). Statistics about how frequently whites are arrested for the same crimes.
2). Evidence that the crimes had taken place in both cases.
Paul,
While on the topic of fallacious reasoning:
Why does the author use the racial demographics of the entire “surrounding area”? Met Council statistics indicate the average trip length to be 6.5 miles. Should the author not more accurately limit his data set for his analysis to the population most likely to be in the area?
https://data.census.gov/cedsci/
Gives racial demographics by zip code. Take a look at the zip codes within a 6.5 mile radius of Lauderdale and St Anthony. A quick look seems to indicate the the Black population might more properly be estimated at ~ 30% not 19%. Because while Lauderdale and St Anthony are predominately white, they are also very small numbers in comparison to the population in the cities and zip codes surrounding them. Small numbers (Lauderdale has only 2500 residents), when used in percentages, sometimes lose their some of their statistical significance.
So now, if you accept my rationale to better describe the the population, does the 28%, 32% and 34% seem that disproportionate to 30% adjusted population number? Uncertain really – one would need to have some idea on measuring error (ie – who determined what race class the data was attributed to) to make a statistically significant determination.
I go through the because I am sick and tired of sloppy statistical analysis being used to cite a “racial disparity” of some attribute/outcome/condition. Yes, I agree completely, there ARE some racial inequities and they need to be addressed. But not nearly as many as is being portrayed in the media right now. Some of this reporting is very sloppy science. Especially the there is an element of personal responsibility or choice that leads to the outcome as Betsy points out.
But the way this is being reported certainly does re-enforce today’s narrative – especially to those unfamiliar with statistics.
++++++++++++++++
PS – by the way, even my analysis above is not super accurate – because the population that should be used is the number of people who DRIVE through Lauderdale and St Anthony – living there or nearby is not a completely relevant measure of who gets stopped by police. After all, only DRIVERS get stopped.
“This entire argument that blacks are being singled out by the police should be looked at in a different way. ”
Different how? The study set out statistics and, as far as I can tell from reading the actual report, was fairly neutral about how they are presented.
Here’s a different way of looking at things: a Stanford University study (https://openpolicing.stanford.edu/findings/) found that Latino and African American drivers are stopped at higher rates than white drivers. The study also found that white drivers are less likely to be searched after a stop than Latino or African American drivers. Another different way: white drivers who are stopped are less likely to be ticketed or arrested than African American or Latino drivers (https://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=4779).
Smearing George Floyd’s character really has nothing to do with this issue, unless your different way of looking at this entire argument is that African Americans deserve the disproportionate treatment.
Ah, victim blaming is it? Should we also go back to those good old days of yore and blame women for rapes, abuse victims for their beatings, and the poor for their poverty? (Oh who are we kidding, conservatives (yep including you) never stopped any of that anyway)
Ms. Larey might have been referring to the victim known as Jacob Blake’s girlfriend, and mother of his three children. Not sure why the moderator would object to this information. Feel free to look up Jacob Blake July 6, 2020.
A white man commented in MP about the George Floyd killing saying that he gave someone a counterfeit $20 bill. No, they did not point a gun at him etc. He got called and said where he thought he might have gotten the bill and was told to have a nice day. He did not even have to make restitution. We do not know for sure that the bill was even counterfeit or that he knew it was.
Correlating why different people were stopped could be interesting. However, that doesn’t capture anything about people who had a similar situation as those who were stopped- but were NOT stopped.
And what profiling is happening, that correlates with typically Black drivers? Are the police particularly focusing on certain kinds of cars or cars in certain condition or cars that have loud music playing that annoys the officer, so they dont let slide the fact that the person didnt signal their turn?
Ms. Retkwa,
I had to stop for a moment when you mentioned loud stereos in cars. This is a problem throughout the community, and I fully understand your comment. I wish there were a law prohibiting stereos in cars which creating a booming sound. The volume at which many car stereos are played make them a safety hazard, as drivers with loud stereos can’t often hear sirens from approaching emergency vehicles. If this is a reason for the number of stops of Black-owned/operated vehicles, then drivers must realize they are dealing with a dangerous mix of enjoyment and driving.
Another set of concerns involves expired tags and plates, and safety lights on cars which are burned out.
A friend of mine is a Black man from Ethiopia. His dad was an Ethiopian supreme court justice and attorney. My friend is a surgeon. We drive through Saint Anthony from time to time. My friend is terrified of police in the United States and fears getting stopped. His driving habits are so conservative as to be concerning to me.
I hope we are never stopped in Saint Anthony. While my friend is an easy-going and pleasant character, his nervousness around officers is bound to make some officers wonder about him. My dad is a retired attorney and former president of the Anoka County Bar Association. My uncle is a retired police officer.
We wish the officers well, but ask that they exercise prudence when making stops. There is no reason to pull out a gun in most cases. We are law abiding citizens who wish to be left alone and go about our lives in a reasonable and considerate manner.
I am a White man who has friends from many different backgrounds, and am flexible with responding to concerns. I wish police officers well, and realize that most officers are not going to harm people.
The statistics clearly show what I’d call crayonism; a prejudice and/or fear of crayons from the darker side of the box. Others call this racism (I say we are all one human race) or white supremacy. Evidently policemen are unable to recognize and change their own prejudicial habit patterns, which is why many citizens/communities would prefer defunding this form of community control and beginning to depend more on other options, as was done long ago — having funding for the homeless rather than just harassing them, having counseling for the mentally and emotionally challenged, etc.
Mr. Wilson,
While I understand the filter through which you are viewing history, I want to neutralize the extreme nature of your comments. While there are some people in the United States who have difficulties with people whose skin is “darker” than theirs, there are the greater many who do not ascribe to what you poetically refer to as “crayonism” — in other words, racism.
I, for one, came from a virtually “White” social environment until attending De La Salle High School and Macalester College (both in Minneapolis and Saint Paul, Minnesota), and schools in Europe and Latin America, and then the University of Minnesota. Like millions of other people in the United States, I learned to value people for their character, not their skin tone or skeletal definition. Hence, I want to put brakes on your comments and on the review of others who may go along with your viewpoint while reading your comments.
Clearly, we have a great mix of people in the United States — and this is seen in the many hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of White people and people from other races who are standing up for the Black community and sharing our concerns that Blacks be treated with the same respect that Whites receive from officers; noting, also, that not all officers are racist or brutal.
Moreover, having known people from around the world, I can say that people from “non-White” races also have tendencies to prefer people of “their own kind”. People tend to be attracted to what they have known best — whether that amounts to non-malevolent racism or outright naive hatred of other races. Whites do not have the monopoly on racism. I am engaged to an Asian woman, and have dated Black women and women from Latin American nations, as well as White women.
As I mentioned in a post on my childhood experience in grade school in the 1960’s, learning about race relations and becoming considerate and friendly to races other than my own, I had to be taught to not feel uncomfortable about people from other races and to learn to take people one on one or to (later) look at groups of people in a “racial paradigm” for shared qualities as would a sociologist or cultural anthropologist.
While I doubt that you are making blanket statements, there is that appearance in your writing.
I understand that the St. Anthony police participate in the Lights On program of MicroGrants. Instead of tickets they give out coupons to fix burned out headlights, broken tail lights etc. How does this affect these statistics?
I guess it is up to me to pose the obvious question.
Are blacks stopped more often because they’re breaking the law more often? This is certainly the case regarding violent crime according to the Bureau of Judicial Statistics.
https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/cv18.pdf (Table 12)
Everyone wants a change in policing, but I’d like to see some honest appraisal of the efforts the police are making. I don’t think this is that.
People are seldom subject to traffic stops for violent crime. Traffic stops tend to be for minor violations.
Many of these confrontations with police begin with a traffic stop. In fact it’s probably the number one way a black man can be brought into the justice system.
But traffic law violations are rarely violent crimes, as you claim disproportionately involve the group Philando Castile would be in. He surely was not committing a crime for a cracked taillight. As a person we found out he was a school employee whose work with the children at Hill was valued by all who knew him. (Yet you bring up violent crime and his race?)
The St, Anthony police are funded by St. Anthony taxpayers and it’s a huge part of our property taxes to pay for police. The people I know are always leery of their local cops patrolling highways instead of neighborhoods and business districts. We know they get bored and prefer some “action” which involves going out on the highway and practicing pulling people over. Some of the younger ones do it to get ready to apply for State Trooper.
Your post offends me for its stereotyping without supportive evidence. All your stats say to me is some communities are heavily policed and therefore heavily cited.
You know… If I can PROVE I got pulled over and ticketed because I was Black, I can sue for a great deal of money. If I was pulled over for speeding, and I was Black, BUT I WAS speeding, I guess I just have to pay the fine. Obviously there is no proof of the individual occurrences ,or the cities would be broke. Do not do the crime, if you can’t pay the fine.(apologies to Tony Barretta).
You know . . . an officer has a great deal of discretion as to whom he or she pulls over, and it is difficult to “prove” that it was because of race, since it’s the officer’s word against the person he stopped.
You know . . . law enforcement officers also have qualified immunity in civil rights cases. If they can say they puled someone over because of a suspected violation (“reasonable, articulable suspicion”) there is no viable lawsuit.
You know . . . racial disparities may mean that white speeders are not pulled over or ticketed at the same rate as non-white speeders.
“racial disparities may mean that white speeders are not pulled over or ticketed at the same rate as non-white speeders.”
Yes, they may mean that, or it may mean blacks speed more often than whites. Without a complete data set, it’s nothing but conjecture, which speaks to the point I made. This isn’t an honest appraisal of the reforms the PD says they have been making.
We don’t know. All we have is the data on stops.
I know the point you were trying to make, any “no, not really” notwithstanding. I’m surprised you didn’t ask about “black on white” crime.
I love the “but what if black people actually commit more crime” whataboutism. And then they either provide data irrelevant to the topic at hand (traffic violations that are safety concerns) or they provide anecdotes. Let’s think about this a different way and you all raise your hands if your answer to the following questions is affirmative:
Do you identify as white? (sees most, if not all hands raised)
Do you APPEAR white? (sees most, if not all hands raised)
Have you ever violated the law and didn’t get caught? (a few hands) Be honest. (a few more hands) Do you people actually believe in Hell? (all hands)
Have you ever seen another white person violate the law and not get caught? Again, be honest. (all hands)
There you go. 100% of white people violate the law at least once and don’t get caught (and most NEVER get caught). I know. It’s a small sample size, but I bet it holds pretty true over the entire US population. What it doesn’t do is prove that white people are caught less often for crime than black people. But what it DOES do is bring to question whether we can trust the data that suggests that black people commit crime more frequently.
Now, this article is certainly flawed. We don’t know if the apparent disparity in citations against black people is actually a disparity. This can ONLY be shown by surveying the population that regularly drives through the area and surveying all the people that don’t get caught. Both are likely an impossibility. However, I would posit that some of the “disparity” (if it exists, and I bet it does) is the result of selective locational policing. That is, cops spend more time in areas where they’re more likely to CATCH crime. They don’t spend time in where crime is diluted (e.g., side streets, less popular business areas). That does not mean that more crime is happening in the areas they prefer to police, just that the fish are in a smaller barrel. Look at the businesses and traffic that is more likely to be in those areas vs those they spend less time in and ask: 1. By selectively policing in more “efficient” crime areas are the police unintentionally selecting who to cite by class and/or race? 2. Does this cause certain people to disproportionately be charged with crimes while allowing other people to disproportionately get away with them?
Now for an anecdote: I see white people committing dangerous traffic violations ALL THE TIME. I can count on one finger (maybe two?) how many times I’ve seen anyone pulled over for any of them. I’ve seen said crimes (like blatant red light running) committed in front of the police. Nada. My theory–it’s just easier to set up a speed trap than actually deal with dangerous crimes without someone actually calling 911.