In 2018, several high-profile reports of Black men being killed by police in Missouri and New York eventually prompted the Berkeley Police Department to contact the Center for Policing Equity. The nonprofit, which conducts analyses on stop data, uncovered major racial disparities in traffic stops, searches, and uses of force.
An article by Berkleyside reports that the department has declared victory after completing an 11-year initiative to address issues of racial profiling, and racial disparities in its enforcement policies and practices.
However, data show Black people remain the most frequent targets when police use force, from more than 40% in 2021 to more than half in 2023, although that is linked to another disparity: BPD arrests Black people far more frequently.
Crash demographics are a common benchmark, but “all benchmarks have limitations,” said Matt Graham, a senior analyst at the Center for Policing Equity, which delivered the 2018 report.
BPD’s new benchmark “is more likely to undercount certain types of people who may get into an accident and then not want to interact with police,” like undocumented migrants or those with criminal histories, Graham said. Individual police officers in many cases show “same-race leniency” in issuing tickets after crashes, he said, which could skew an agency’s at-fault collisions demographics.
“I don’t think traffic accident demographics is necessarily better or worse than population benchmarking, they’re two different estimators that have different biases and shortcomings inherent in them,” Graham said. “The one thing we have seen more organizations tending towards is providing multiple benchmarks.”
A city task force recommended the department follow a series of policy changes to improve public safety and community outcomes. These included establishing an early intervention system to weed out instances of racial bias and other unwanted behavior by police officers, officer and dispatcher training to identify and avoid profiling, and creating a system to allow the public to easily file complaints and make reports. Read the full article on The Berkleyside’s website.