Racial Profiling In Massachusetts

A series of articles in the Boston Globe reveals racial disparity in traffic stops by Massachusetts police. Police officers in that state have been required to record the race of individuals stopped and ticketed since 2000. The Globe reviewed the records and reports the following findings:

* Blacks and Hispanics are ticketed at about twice their share of the population. Although blacks account for 4.6 percent of the state's driving-age population, they receive 10.0 percent of tickets to state residents. Hispanics make up 5.6 percent of the population, but get 9.6 percent of tickets.

* Once a driver gets a ticket, a vehicle search is rare, occurring only every 60 tickets. But the search rate for black and Hispanic drivers is about 1 out of 40 tickets.... Blacks and Hispanics driving a new car are especially more often searched than whites in new cars.

* Once searched, more of the whites were apparently found with drugs. Officers are required to report drug charges on tickets, so the Registry can suspend driving privileges. In all, 16 percent of whites searched were charged with a drug offense, compared with 12 percent of blacks, 10 percent of Hispanics, 7 percent of Asians, 6 percent of American Indians, and 4 percent of Middle Easterners. The tickets don't detail what officers were looking for, or whether they found it, but they do show whether there was a drug charge.

Even assuming all the traffic stops were legitimate, that doesn't explain why African-Americans and Hispanics have their vehicles serarched at a higher rate or searched more often without cause.

Also interesting is the police resistance to collecting statistics on the races of persons stopped, even though they are legally required to do so. Most cops comply with the law, but one who opposes the requirement says: "Why should it be incumbent upon me to determine the race? Why do I have to guess? I don't guess your address, I don't guess your name, I don't guess your date of birth.''

What are the chances this officer never uses racial descriptions in the line of duty, except to describe persons who have volunteered that information to him? Go on, take a wild guess.