State police: Study finds no racial, ethnic disparities in traffic stop outcomes
PITTSBURGH (KDKA) -- State police released the results of a study looking at all trooper-initiated traffic stops in 2022.
A research team led by Dr. Robin Engel, the senior vice president of the National Policing Institute, analyzed the traffic stops to see if there were patterns or trends police needed to address regarding fairness in enforcement.
Police said the report showed no detectable substantive racial or ethnic disparities in warnings, citations or arrests during the 440,000 traffic stops made last year.
The report said that Black drivers were nearly two times more likely to be searched than white drivers, though the overall likelihood of being searched across all racial and ethnic groups was "quite low."
The study found that discretionary searches were the only outcome with statistically significant and substantively small or moderate findings of racial and ethnic disparities that aren't explained with available measures.
Seizure rates for discretionary searches are significantly different across race and ethnicity, though researchers said limitations restricted their ability to further examine the relationship between the two.
The study also found that variables like the reason for the stop and evidence discovered are the strongest predictors of post-stop outcomes like warnings, arrests and searches.
"At the highest level, when we sit and try to come up with a system as I alluded to earlier where we want the most professional non-biased police service, it starts literally in this room with our cadets that get brought in and the first several weeks where we discuss things in the training curriculum like implicit bias," Pennsylvania State Police Commissioner Colonel Christopher Paris said during a press conference.
Recommendations from the study included continuing to refine traffic stop data collection and enhancing accountability and oversight.
"The Pennsylvania State Police should be commended for reestablishing their comprehensive, voluntary data collection system, and these findings should inspire confidence among Commonwealth residents toward the leadership and Troopers of the Pennsylvania State Police," Engel said in a press release.
State police said they became one of the first police agencies to voluntarily collect traffic stop information in 1999 and continued through 2010. Police said they reinstated data collection in 2021, with the first year of the program focused on improving data collection and addressing data quality issues.