Former Ladue police chief Larry White claims in a lawsuit filed Monday that he lost his job last year for refusing to crack down on black drivers and for disobeying requests that he look the other way when Ladue residents appeared to be driving drunk or breaking other laws.
It will be interesting to see how the facts emerge in this case. Individuals have often claimed that police departments discriminate in this way, and there have even been studies that support those claims. But, it is rare for someone at the level of police chief to agree that these claims are true. Police chiefs often do their best to protect cops from allegations of racial bias. And, when people have suggested that the bias in stopping cars is the result of police chiefs who quietly approve of this kind of racism, then the police chiefs defend their own jobs by denying it.
Since Larry White was fired he no longer has those incentives and is in a position to tell the truth. Still, given the history of police chiefs taking self-serving positions on these kinds of matters it is worth considering that he might be trying to explain why he was fired-- I was not able to find the ostensible reason given by the city for his firing. We'll have to see how the case unfolds to find out.
In his petition, White alleges Ladue city Mayor Irene Holmes told him she wanted "those people" to be stopped and pulled out of their cars so that others would see what happened and avoid coming to Ladue. White said he understood "those people" to mean black drivers.
White also alleges the mayor told him she wanted police to write lots of traffic tickets, but not against city residents, and that she pressured White in 2008 to have police write more tickets to make up for about $300,000 in revenue loss it expected while a portion of Highway 40, also known as Interstate 64, was shut down and rebuilt...Holmes also allegedly told White the department in the past didn't arrest drunken Ladue residents after pulling them over but rather just drove them home.
This seems plausible enough, the statistics from the department also support this idea:
Black drivers accounted for 22 percent of traffic stops in Ladue in 2006 under White's predecessor, compared to just 14 percent of all stops in 2008 under White. (source)
How can racial profiling occur?
- Police are explicitly told to stop people based on race. Example, this case is a perfect example if these allegations are correct.
- Individual offers allow racial bias to enter their judgements. For example, letting a "nice young (white) man" go while giving a ticket to "one of those (black) thugs" the officer is influenced by racial and cultural cues.
I reviewed a number of newer studies about racial profiling and the results are varied. Since racial profiling has been a bigger issue in the news and often controversial law enforcement agencies are now collecting data on traffic stops that include the race or ethnicity of drivers, police use resident population data as baselines to determine if they are applying racial bias. In some cases (but not all) this data has shown that there is no discrimination. In other cases the it has shown discrimination. But, Samuel Walker, Emeritus Professor of Criminal Justice at University of Nebraska says that "Interpreting these data to determine whether a pattern of race discrimination exists poses enormous difficulties."(source) The "baseline" used by police departments may distort the rates of discrimination since the proportion of minorities in a city may be higher than the proportion of minorities who have cars. The location of the traffic stops also may may have impacts on the data. Samuel Walker is not the only one who as noticed this problem another study highlights the importance of the location of the traffic stops:
We propose an ecological dimension to racial profiling by comparing the distribution of drivers on the roadways with officers' proactive surveillance and stop behavior in a predominantly white suburban community bordering a predominantly African American community. African Americans are subject to significant racial profiling, as reflected in disproportionate surveillance and stopping by the police when driving through whiter areas. Officers' behavior is not explained by African Americans' criminality because the "hit rates" for African American drivers are lower in white areas. Profiling is sensitive to race and place and manifests itself organizationally, reflecting community patterns of residential segregation.
Race and place: The ecology of racial profiling African American motorists
, Justice Quarterly, Volume 19, Issue 3 September 2002
I think this paper has isolated one of the key dimensions of the problem. And it relates back to the allegations of Larry White. People are stopped for being in the "wrong place" so discrimination is directly related to the strong patterns of residential segregation found in the US. Another possibility is that collecting data on the race of drivers may make cops more aware of the possibility for discrimination and decrease the rates. I have always thought that having cameras on cop cars to record traffic stops is a good way to improve the safety of these stops for both the motorist and the cop. There are some indications that cameras cause polices to follow procedures with more care, and this is a good thing. Now that we have more data on traffic stops we should be able to pinpoint the source of the problem and hopefully make "driving while black" a thing of the past.
Whistle blowers like Larry White are also doing a lot to move things forward.