California police officers stopped Black and Latino drivers and pedestrians at much higher rates than white people in 2023, repeating a trend that has been documented every year since law enforcement officers began collecting data. The latest report from the California Racial and Identity Profiling Advisory Board (RIPA) says that youths perceived by officers to be transgender are also more likely to be subjected to use of force by police, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. "A cultural shift is required to end racism in policing" and other disparities based on individuals' appearances rather than their actions, the RIPA board said in its report, which included data collected in 2023 on 4.7 million stops of motor vehicles and pedestrians conducted by the 539 law enforcement agencies in California. "Young Californians who are driving, biking and walking and perceived to be Black or brown are regularly stopped, asked to consent to a search, handcuffed, sat on the curb, put in a police car, and questioned for information that is recorded on a field interview card before being released," said Andrea Guerrero , co-chair of the RIPA Board and director of Alliance San Diego, a civil rights group. "This is California's version of stop and frisk that causes immeasurable harm to the community and erodes trust in law enforcement from a young age."
The RIPA board said state and local lawmakers "should explore how limiting officer discretion in stops could reduce racial disparities." Several law enforcement agencies, including the California Highway Patrol , have placed restrictions on their officers' open-ended authority to decide whether a motorist or pedestrian is acting suspiciously and should be stopped and searched, the report said. The state's largest police organization, the Peace Officers Research Association of California , said the report lacked crucial information — including the racial composition of areas where stops occurred, the concentration of officers in those areas and whether officers knew the race of a driver they were stopping — and therefore had no basis to accuse police of racial or ethnic profiling. The group opposed the law establishing RIPA and contends each year that the data is not evidence of racial profiling. "With elected leaders relying on this research to create laws and allocate resources, these flaws and analytical shortcomings risk leading to policies that undermine public trust and harm both law enforcement and the communities they serve," the group said last week. The legislature has rejected many of the board's recommendations, including proposals to ban "pretext stops," in which officers pull drivers over for minor offenses like broken taillights to search for drugs or guns. The board's reports and other studies have found that the practice disproportionately affects minorities Legislation to ban such stops was defeated last year, with police unions and prosecutors leading the opposition.
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