Vermont Business Magazine The Vermont State Police is releasing traffic-stop data from 2019, marking the fifth consecutive year the agency has published its raw numbers to continue the public discussion on how to address racial disparities in discretionary car stops.
Among the key takeaways:
- The number of searches decreased for motorists in discretionary traffic stops compared with 2018, while troopers uncovered illegal items in more than 70% of the searches. The rate at which searches resulted in finding illegal items (known as the “hit rate”) decreased by 6% from 2018.
- Racial disparities remain in who is searched and who is issued traffic tickets compared with warnings.
- The majority of stops and searches of motorists occur on interstate highways (I-89 and I-91) and involve vehicles with non-Vermont registration plates.
- The Vermont State Police conducts about 58,000 car stops a year, in addition to the roughly 58,600 calls for service per year (assaults, homicides, vehicle crashes, alarms, hate crimes, vandalism, violations of court orders, and so forth).
For every discretionary traffic stop, a Vermont state trooper will issue some written documentation — either a traffic ticket or a written warning. Data collected on each of these documents must include, age, gender, race of driver, reason for the stop, type of search if conducted and evidence if located, along with the outcome of the stop. All this data must be posted annually for public viewing before Sept. 1 of each year.
State police commanders say that even though some of the numbers are small, which makes drawing statistical conclusions difficult, the 2019 data show the agency must continue to address the disparate impact of traffic stop outcomes.
“These numbers show we still have work to do,” said Col. Matthew T. Birmingham, director of the Vermont State Police. “The latest traffic stop data indicate that racial disparities continue to persist. Our efforts over the past decade to address these disparities, while significant, have not been enough to eliminate them. We are working with many community partners and engaging the full resources of our Fair and Impartial Policing Committee to dig into the numbers, find out what’s behind them, and redouble our efforts to eliminate racial disparities, which have no place in policing.”
The Vermont State Police presented its full report on the 2019 traffic stop data during an online meeting Tuesday, Aug. 18, of the Fair and Impartial Policing Committee. The raw data also is posted on the Vermont State Police website: https://vsp.vermont.gov/communityaffairs/trafficstops.
The 2019 data show:
- Total stops: The state police made 57,971 discretionary motor vehicle stops in 2019, an increase of 131 stops from 2018 (57,840).
- Racial demographics:
- White operators: 54,222 stops, accounting for 93.53% of total stops.
- Black operators: 1,611 stops, accounting for 2.78% of the total.
- Asian operators: 1,222 stops, accounting for 2.11% of the total.
- Hispanic operators: 868 stops, accounting for 1.5% of the total.
- Native American operators: 47 stops, accounting for 0.08% of the total.
- Searches at car stops: The Vermont State Police searched 137 operators of vehicles in discretionary stops in 2019. That translates to about 0.24% of total discretionary car stops resulting in a search with consent or probable cause standards.
- White operators: 106. Contraband found: 81 (hit rate 76.42%).
- Black operators: 14. Contraband found: 10 (hit rate 71.43%).
- Asian operators: 3. Contraband found: 0 (hit rate 0.00%).
- Hispanic operators: 14. Contraband found: 12 (hit rate 85.71%).
- Native American: 0
- Tickets: 37.1% of all operators stopped received a ticket as opposed to a warning, with a demographic breakdown as follows:
- White operators: 36.6%.
- Black operators: 42.9%.
- Asian operators: 49.5%.
- Hispanic operators: 45.3%.
- Native American operators: 36.2%.
“The traffic stop data for the VSP for 2019 do in fact show that racial disparities continue to exist in regard to searches and ticketing. These are long-standing problems that continue to be addressed, certainly in the trainings that I participate both in designing and conducting,” said Dr. Etan Nasreddin-Longo, co-chair of the Vermont State Police Fair and Impartial Policing Committee. “The answers as to why these disparities continue to bedevil the agency’s efforts are not easy to come by. It would be easy to declaim that ‘training does not work,’ but such a statement would fly in the face of studies that in fact show the opposite to be true.”
“This year, the deeper dive into the realities of traffic stops will help to refine and revise trainings even further,” Nasreddin-Longo added. “There is reason to believe that this deeper dive will even identify areas in the state in which particularly complex social realities collide with the expectations of the lawmakers who make the laws, and, finally, with law enforcement, who must enforce them.”
Since 2015, the Vermont State Police has made numerous changes to address fair and impartial policing in the state. The agency created the position of director of fair and impartial policing and community affairs, a post currently held by Capt. Garry Scott. The director is responsible for developing and implementing a comprehensive program to ensure fair and impartial policing practices at all levels of the state police; building relationships of trust with historically marginalized communities; diversifying the workforce; and improving cultural awareness.
Among the many ongoing steps the Vermont State Police is taking to address disparities, traffic stop statistics are monitored trooper-by-trooper, and supervisors are instructed to continually review this data and address it with troopers as part of their performance review process.
The state police also has a standing Fair and Impartial Policing Committee, composed of a cross-section of Vermonters, including members of the state police, the Vermont chapters of the NAACP, the LGBTQIA Alliance & Pride Center, the Vermont Partnership for Fairness and Diversity, college students, state residents and others. The committee’s mission is to advise the Vermont State Police on matters related to impartial and ethical policing and community outreach.
Source: WATERBURY, Vermont (Wednesday, Aug. 19, 2020) — The Vermont State Police
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VSP releases 2019 traffic-stop data, racial disparities remain - Vermont Biz
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