Vermont State Police command staff from across the state attend a presentation Tuesday evening on traffic stop data. Photo by Elizabeth Hewitt/VTDigger
SOUTH ROYALTON — Data collected over the last five years shows that ethnic minority drivers are stopped, cited and searched by the Vermont State Police at a higher rate than white drivers.
According to the research, state troopers search black drivers at five times the rate they do white drivers.
Jack McDevitt, a researcher at Northeastern University who analyzed the data, said the information may not in itself indicate bias, but it does provide a jumping off point for probing trends in particular areas and by certain law enforcement officers.
“A disparity doesn’t equal discrimination,” McDevitt said.
McDevitt and Janice Iwama, a doctoral candidate at Northeastern University, presented their report to an audience of about 100, including Vermont State Police command staff from around the state, Tuesday evening at Vermont Law School.
State civil rights leaders, members of the Vermont State Police Fair and Impartial Policing Committee, lawmakers and others joined the discussion.
According to the data, troopers let a higher percentage of white drivers go with a warning, rather than a citation, than members of other ethnic groups.
Troopers ticketed 37.2 percent of the white drivers they stopped and issued warnings to 60.9 percent. However, 42.8 percent of black drivers who were stopped received citations, while 54.1 percent were issued warnings.
Although state troopers searched just 1.1 percent of white motorists who were stopped, they searched 5.1 percent of black drivers, 4 percent of Hispanic drivers and 3.9 percent of Native American drivers they pulled over. Asian drivers are searched at a lower rate, in 0.8 percent of stops.
Jack McDevitt, of Northeastern University, presents the analysis of traffic stop data Tuesday. Photo by Elizabeth Hewitt/VTDigger
When troopers fill out the paperwork for issuing a warning or citation, there is a section where they record, based on their perception, whether the driver is white, African-American, Hispanic or Latino, Native American or Asian. The database is compiled from that paperwork.
McDevitt noted that Vermont State Police search motorists at a lower rate than in other parts of the country and tend to turn up contraband, such as drugs, at a much higher rate.
Vermont troopers found contraband on 80 percent of the white drivers and 79.3 percent of the Asian drivers they searched.
However, the hit rate for searches tends to be lower for other groups: Contraband was found in 68.5 percent of searches on black drivers, 64.8 percent on Hispanic drivers, and 63.6 percent on Native American drivers.
The analysis also breaks down the data to show trends by barracks and by trooper.
One person referred to only as Trooper 1 issued citations to 91.3 percent of the nonwhite drivers he or she stopped, but cited only 44.9 percent of white drivers.
A different trooper searched 20.5 percent of the nonwhite drivers he or she stopped and 5.7 percent of white drivers.
Throughout the evening, officials emphasized that the data analysis is not the end of the project, but a midpoint in a longer project.
Public Safety Commissioner Keith Flynn said the report is “part of a process that we are going to utilize as we go forward.”
“From what we’ve seen, there are two types of law enforcement agencies in this country,” Flynn said. “There are those with departments that are running away from what the data’s telling them as far as bias-free policing, and there are those that are moving toward it.”
“We have chosen to move toward it, to make ourselves better,” Flynn said.
The report kicked off a sometimes lively discussion of accountability and culture reform within the ranks of the Vermont State Police.
Attorney Robert Appel. File photo by Cory Dawson/VTDigger
Attorney Robert Appel, a member of the committee and the former head of the Vermont Human Rights Commission, said he found the data to be troubling.
“I commend the state police for doing what they’re doing. However, I think there is far more work to be done, and I think we should not be patting ourselves on the back,” Appel said.
Appel said a change in culture is multipronged. It involves adopting policies, training to those policies and, most importantly, he said, holding people accountable to those policies.
Mark Hughes, of the advocacy group Justice for All, said Vermonters have been waiting for years to see the data that has been collected.
“From a community perspective, where I stand, you look like you’re on their side to me,” Hughes said to McDevitt.
Hughes also cautioned against seeing the data analysis as “the silver bullet” in terms of discrimination in the criminal justice system. Police are just one player in the whole system, he said, and he urged greater scrutiny.
“Law enforcement is clearly the tip of the arrow of the criminal justice system,” Hughes said.
Flynn said he hopes to focus on discerning when evidence of bias in policing may result from a lack of training, versus when there is “intentional” bias. In those cases, disciplinary action may be needed, he said.
Though the breakdown of stops by particular troopers is not public, that information is available to officials.
Flynn said the department does not intend to hide behind the report as the end of a project. “This is telling us that we have a long way to go,” he said.
Sgt. Eric Albright, a member of the committee and a patrol commander, said he believes the data points to “some things that need to be looked at.”
However, he cautioned against extrapolating department-wide behavior from the analysis.
“I don’t think it’s fair to necessarily judge the entire agency based on that data, but I find it as a useful tool,” Albright said.
Curtiss Reed Jr., executive director of the Vermont Partnership for Fairness and Diversity, has worked extensively with the statewide law enforcement agency on fair and impartial policing training.
Curtiss Reed Jr. is executive director of the Vermont Partnership for Fairness and Diversity. File photo by Randy Holhut/The Commons
Reed hailed the report as an important development but noted that Vermont still has a ways to go. He would like to see stop data broken down further to show trends along lines of years of service.
“There’s an old culture in the state police, and there’s a new culture coming up,” Reed said. That metric could provide insight as to how deeply recent training reforms have been absorbed.
But Reed said statewide reform of law enforcement has been slow because of a lack of buy-in from smaller agencies. “Sheriffs, local (police departments) and constables need to be in the tent, and they’re not,” Reed said.
A law passed three years ago mandated that all police agencies in Vermont collect traffic stop data, but that information has been slow to coalesce. The pace prompted lawmakers to return to the drafting table earlier this year, and the Legislature passed a measure requiring agencies to submit the data to a central system in a readable format later this year.
Allen Gilbert, executive director of the Vermont chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, said the analysis is a first step. “It’s going to be a long road ahead,” he said.
“The good news is everybody recognizes a lot of steps need to be taken,” Gilbert said.
Capt. Ingrid Jonas, director of fair and impartial policing and community affairs for the Vermont State Police, said the data is “like taking the temperature.” The next steps will involve changing institutional practices, altering training, and ensuring that fair and impartial policing values are factored in as part of recruitment.
One change could be considering an individual’s record through the lens of fair and impartial policing as part of the review that goes into a promotion, she said.
Jonas emphasized that the data analysis is part of a longer-term effort.
“We’re not just doing this for the flavor of the month,” she said.
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