THE PROBLEM is familiar. According to the latest batch of traffic data released by the Portland Police Bureau, covering all stops in 2010, cops continue to pull over and search African Americans and Latinos about twice as often as white Portlanders.
Also familiar, if equally troubling, is the idea that cops are targeting blacks and Latinos in what accountability advocates see as “fishing expeditions.” According to a review of the data by Portland Copwatch and the Albina Ministerial Alliance (AMA), whites are way more likely to have contraband like weapons or drugs, even though they’re searched far less often.
But here’s what’s new—the Portland Police Bureau has swallowed hard and finally admitted something it’s often struggled to say: Part of the problem might really be racism. Overt, institutional, and even “implicit” racism—which means you might be a little racist without even realizing it.
Historically, the bureau has denied racism might play a role in traffic stops and searches, instead solely blaming other factors like socioeconomics, crime rates, and targeted actions like flooding so-called gang “hot spots” with extra cops.
“Context is important. But owning [potential racism] is important, too,” Sergeant Greg Stewart, a member of the bureau’s three-year-old stat-crunching team, told the Mercury. “We don’t want to make excuses, either.”
And, in another change, the bureau explicitly isn’t disputing the analysis by Copwatch or the AMA. Instead, at the June 20 meeting of the city’s Community and Police Relations Committee (CPRC), where the bureau first unveiled the data, Assistant Chief Larry O’Dea thanked the two groups for their work.
Cops and observers say two factors are behind the bureau’s shift: The first is an increasing reliance—part of a national trend—on statistics and research. The second is the bureau’s ongoing scramble, in a time of budget austerity, to do more with less. Improving cops’ “legitimacy,” as Stewart explained in the CPRC meeting, means they’ll spend less time on routine calls and more time on serious cases.
As such, the changes brought cautious plaudits from accountability advocates who’ve spent years tilting with bureau officials over racial profiling.
“It’s a huge jump from where we were,” says Dan Handelman of Portland Copwatch, who remembers when some cops didn’t want the city’s old “racial profiling” committee to be named as such.
AMA member JoAnn Hardesty, who co-chaired that committee with then-Police Chief Rosie Sizer, agreed the cops’ rhetorical shift is a “huge step forward.” But she also said it won’t mean much if nothing changes.
“Young people in this community are being stopped on a daily basis, and they have to justify why they’re in the community they’re in,” she said at the CPRC meeting. “If we want to do policing differently, we have to think differently. We certainly can’t keep stopping people because they’re black or brown.”
Stewart, who’s been taking classes in statistics and geographic mapping at Portland State, says that’s part of what his stat-crunching unit is working toward. The bureau has finished phasing in new traffic-stop reporting forms, a bid to collect better data about how, why, and when cops decided to stop and search people.
Are cops’ “discretionary” searches the biggest problem? Is it just that more kids are out of school in the summer? Is it gang enforcement in black neighborhoods?
“Right now, we don’t know any of that,” says Stewart. “Maybe we can find better tactics. Maybe there are alternative ways of doing things.”
Stewart hopes to release a limited analysis of 2011 data this September and then issue a full review of 2012 data next year.
The reality, though, is that some tactics may not change. “Hot spot” enforcement might snare a disproportionate number of black kids, but the bureau may decide it can’t afford to do something else. But Stewart says the bureau would at least be able to tell people why.
“If we don’t explain ourselves,” he says, “that’s on us.”
Say what? Cops tend to pull over/stop Blacks and Latinos more than Whites – even though Whites are more likely to have drugs and/or weapons on them? And that the reason cops do this might actually be due to PURE RACISM? And that every stat in the country has been bearing out these facts for years???
HOLY BATSHIT, WHAT AN EARTH-SHATTERING REVELATION!
We need more diversity withint our PPD, perhaps that would help. All I know is that the majority of white male police officers in this town are overtly aggressive, sexist and racist.
Ugh.
So the Portland Copwatch and the Albina Ministerial Alliance are saying that whites are more crime-prone than other races. Anybody who believes that is welcome to purchase low-priced homes in majority black/Hispanic neighborhoods. I’m wondering how many of the writers/editors of the Mercury live in majority black neighborhoods.
When claims, such as the above, clash with my own personal experience, the accounts of others I’ve spoken to/read, FBI statistics and victims surveys – I’m inclined to reject them as unfounded and biased. Blacks and Hispanics commit way more crime (per capita), especially violent crime, and this is why they are stopped more.
Hey racist dumbfuck, guess what – at absolutely NO point did Copwatch nor AMA claim that Whites are “more crime-prone than other races”. What EXACTLY was said in the article was that Whites on average are more likely to carry weapons/drugs/contraband on them than Blacks and Latinos. And stats that have been conducted over and over for years backs this up with consistency.
“…my own personal experience…”
Yeah, sounds like some White boy got his ass beat ONCE (probably for shooting his mouth off) and now he thinks that people of color commit way more crime and violent crime than Whites.
#gotrollon4chan
This is insanity and typical of the libtarded thinking in Portland. When are the people going to realize this is not “racist” but simply the truth- no way in hell do Whites carry more illegal weapons and drugs than rugs, to think so is simply delusional. Sadly, these libtards will refuse to accept the truth until one of their friends or family are sacrificed at the Altar of Diversity. Remember, this feral species in NOT “just like us”…
this is Terry Wagar, I am a victim of a murder conspiracy started by my wife Joan Wagar and her lover the cop Eric Carlson and I am not their only victim, Joan Wagar was hiding her affair with a cop and was poisoning me and her lover Eric Carlson and his partners in law enforcement made sure I could not get help from a hospital or from 911.
I am not the only one Joan Wagar was poisoning three family members died within a three year period during Joan Wagar’s use of poison.
On March 26th 2007 I caught Joan Wagar and Eric Carlson along with his partners in law enforcement breaking into my home and they planted child porn on our computer and they poisoned my coffee pot and coffee cup and I caught them in the act on a audio recorder.
They also killed a female that morning and they were planting evidence in my home framing me for their crimes and they bragged about it at Clackamas Walmart to Walmart employees.
I caught them in the act of committing their crimes and I caught them bragging about it and I caught them verbally giving me the blame after the fact using flyers and word of mouth.
They killed a missing runaway and they were printing flyers giving me the blame, they call this type of framing “Pedofying” meaning they do whatever they have to do to give their target a pedophile reputation and they commit the crimes using photo doubles and planting evidence in their targets home.
I was a plasma donor when Joan Wagar was poisoning me and Eric Carlson was calling my wife by the nick name Mrs Dash in love letters so they are not trying very hard to hide their guilt because no one with a badge in Oregon gives a damn about victims.
On March 26th 2007 Eric Carlson and his partner John Ray murdered a child and they broke into my home to plant evidence framing me for it and I caught them on a audio recorder, the child yelled out and Eric Carlson and John Ray silenced her and it is also on the audio recording.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/53065984/JoanEricSgtWalker
http://salem-news.com/articles/may072012/wagar-diary.php
http://www.rotten-eggs.com/2011/02/doubleclick-and-mrs-dash-real-life.html#comment-form
Terry Wagar
Hey Jose/racist shithead GO FUCK YOURSELF alright. You just signed up for an account TODAY! And you’ve made just ONE post so far. So, you can go fuck yourself.
The graphic is a little unclear. First, it’s the percent of people the cops stop who are searched. Then it’s the percent of those searched who have contraband found on them. (I think… it’s pretty unclear!) Since the base population is people the cops stop, for whatever reason, generalizations about criminality cannot be made from these numbers. The question of whether or not the stops are appropriate is the issue here!
It’s hard to draw conclusions from these numbers. We see blacks searched at twice the rate of whites but their contraband rate is still 3/4 that of whites. There are way too many unknown variables and background facts for an armchair jockey like myself to say whether or not this indicates the level of searching is appropriate.
However, I would strongly question the use of “implicit racism” and “institutional racism” constructs in assessing police performance, since if you go back to the academic work establishing these concepts you’ll see that they are defined in terms of the sorts of issues were examining here, i.e. implicit and institutional racism play a role in these disparities by definition. (This is especially true of the institutional racism idea, but even implicit racism… tell a cop who works on gang issues that he or she unconsciously associates blacks with violence, and they’d likely tell you, if they could be candid, that it’s quite conscious, and based on the reality of their work.) So finding that these forms of racism “play a role” in these disparities tells you precisely nothing, since these disparities ARE BY DEFINITION these forms of racism… (does that make sense?)
Which isn’t to say these aren’t important factors that should be examined, but the devil is very much in the details, and here on the left we’ve had serious serious problems with these academic concepts “escaping into the wild” and becoming excuses to yell “racist” at whomever we want… even though institutional and implicit racism are actually very subtle in a lot of ways, e.g. stereotype threat, social distance, etc. Calls for a therapist rather than an exorcist, if you get my drift. So we should focus on what’s actually happening, and disregard these labels. Explicit racism, however, is intolerable.
@rhayat: actually, the vast majority of violent crime as reported in the national crime victim survey is simple assault and other variations on fistfights. These tend to be done by whites, and so even though blacks are more highly represented in robberies, the overall rates of violent crime commission are very balanced across races.
COMMENT PULLED : Terms of Use violation.
do they consider Apple computers and lattes contraband now?
Well yeah…if the computer’s been stolen and the latte is spiked with Wild Turkey.
Add fireworks to the mac book and latte list.
COMMENT PULLED: Terms of Use violation.
Damn, what’s this Terry Wagar guy saying?
What I am saying DamosA is the Portland police are a bunch of cowardly pedophiles that don’t have the balls to deby a felony charge in a criminal court of law!
Got a problem with that DamosA?
Terry Wagar
“deny”
The infographics are a little unclear – do they mean that 9.5% of traffic stops involving an African-American results in a search, and that 26% of searches of African-Americans result in finding contraband?
Two cops named Eric Carlson and John Ray broke into an apartment on March 26th 2007 and they killed a missing runaway!
Clackamas Walmart employees printed flyers because of this crime!
Terry Wagar
The Portland police cover up murder charges by ignoring victims complaints and they brag on audio death threats to their victims!
Terry Wagar
Terry Wagar is super duper serious… Check it out.
http://aarontodd.wordpress.com/2008/04/07/terry-wagar-dont-worry-im-on-the-case/
And in Lake Oswego, whites are pulled over and arrested far more than any other race combined.
On March 26th 2007 Eric Carlson and a John Ray broke into an apartment early in the morning and they raped, photographed, and murdered a child, and I caught the pedophile cops in the act on a audio recorder!
Eric Carlson and John Ray had a buyer for those photographs meet up with them at Clackamas Walmart where they discussed the details of their crimes!
On that same day Clackamas Walmart employees printed out flyers because of the crimes committed by Eric Carlson and John Ray!
http://www.scribd.com/doc/53065984/JoanEricSgtWalker
http://salem-news.com/articles/may072012/wagar-diary.php
http://www.rotten-eggs.com/2011/02/doubleclick-and-mrs-dash-real-life.html#comment-form
Terry Wagar