No Racial Disparities Found In Livermore Traffic Stops: Report

Livermore CA

15 February, 2022

7:38 PM

Description

LIVERMORE, CA — The Livermore City Council approved a research report on Monday that failed to find "clearly identifiable or concerning pattern of racial/ethnic disparity" in Livermore traffic stops in arrests. Criminologists from the University of Texas at San Antonio examined nearly 25,000 police encounters that took place in the city over a 26-month period. "I've been doing this research close to 20 years and worked with a number of agencies and jurisdictions asking similar questions," said Dr. Rob Tillyer, Department of Criminology & Criminal Justice, the University of Texas at San Antonio. "The findings on the stop side in particular are somewhat uncommon. Livermore Police demonstrates a clear pattern of unbiased activity and should be commended." Researchers looked at 22,737 stops and 24,065 police encounters between Jan. 1 2019 and April 30, 2021. Two benchmarks were used as comparison points: The "veil of darkness" method examined differences in stop rates of non-white and white drivers during the daytime versus the evening, and the second benchmark looked at data containing drivers not-at-fault and at-fault involved in two car crashes. Researchers also looked at whether race and ethnicity predicted the likelihood of an arrest by Livermore police. The traffic crash benchmark did find slightly heightened risks for stops of white, Black and other race drivers for the at-fault benchmark and a slightly larger risk for stops of Black drivers compared to white drivers for the non-at-fault benchmark. "Taken together, the two benchmark analyses do not show a consistent pattern of disparity in stops based on driver race or ethnicity," the report read. "The results of the arrest analyses do not reveal a pattern of racial disparity in police outcomes that disadvantages non-white civilians in the City of Livermore." Read the full report here.