By Gregory Korte and Jane Prendergast
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Monitor Saul Green (from left), UC associate professor John Eck, deputy monitor Richard Jerome and UC associate professor Lin Liu present the traffic stop analysis. (Glenn Hartong photo) | ZOOM |

Black motorists were 36 percent more likely to be stopped by police in Cincinnati than white drivers, according to a study of police traffic stops released Friday.

But the long-awaited study does not conclude that officer bias plays any role in the disparities, saying that bias is only one of a number of possible explanations.

"There may be perfectly sound reasons for these outcomes that the vast majority of the public would endorse," wrote John E. Eck and Lin Liu, the University of Cincinnati professors who were paid $146,075 to do the report for the city. "However, in a democratic society, it is incumbent upon the government to demonstrate why it is impinging upon the freedom of members of the public."

The report, based on traffic stops for the last six months of 2001, pointed to "circumstantial evidence" that the disparities are a result of a "strategic posture of the police department:"

PROFILING REPORT

• View the full report (PDF document)

• Black drivers are more likely to be pulled over for equipment violations - but often end up with only a warning. Courts call such actions "pretextual stops," used as a way to investigate the driver for anything from drunken driving to felony warrants. Police critics say they're often used as an excuse to target minorities. "An unequal impact such as this requires a demonstrated public benefit to justify it," the report said.

• Traffic stops of white motorists are more likely at "repeat locations" - areas such as speed traps and other concentrated areas of enforcement, while stops of black motorists are more spread out. "If the Cincinnati Police Department were using vehicle stops to control crime at hotspots, we would expect to see higher, not lower, repeat addresses among African-Americans."

• Black drivers are less likely to get a citation as the result of a stop, but more likely to be arrested and searched. "We do not know why this is the case. But it raises a question about why a small but important proportion of the public is stopped for no obvious reason, and why African-Americans are disproportionately represented among these people."

Other findings suggested no unequal treatment: Stop durations were comparable, after factoring in that vehicles driven by African-Americans were more likely to have more passengers. And while black motorists were more likely to have their cars searched, the probability of finding drugs or guns was almost identical in cars driven by blacks and whites.

"These contrasting findings make it difficult to state categorically that bias is a substantial cause of disproportionate stopping of African-Americans," the report said.

Other explanations: that African-Americans who are stopped also are more likely to be young and male, and that those factors might better explain police behavior.

Or, the study suggested: "Disproportionate involvement in deviant activity among African-Americans brings them to police attention with greater frequency than is the case among whites."

A separate report by court-appointed monitor Saul Green said the study "raises important questions." While some of the findings can be explained by nonracial factors, others cannot, he said.

"Statistics and research studies are useful for the light they can shed on real events. But statistics and social science won't address how persons in the community are feeling. The concerns of minority residents in Cincinnati are real and need to be addressed," Green wrote. "All segments of the Cincinnati community must use this study as a jumping-off point for further dialogue."

Indeed, police and civil rights advocates looked at the same analysis of Cincinnati traffic stop data released Friday and drew starkly different conclusions.

"The facts are what they are," said Kenneth L. Lawson, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio. "However, there are different interpretations.

"Why are Cincinnati police officers stopping blacks more than whites? Why are they searching blacks more than whites, and why are they keeping them longer?" Lawson said. "It does show a racial disparity. The question is, what is the reason for it?"

Police officers from Chief Tom Streicher down to radar-running motorcycle cops had answers to that question Friday. They say officers spend more time in high-crime areas - neighborhoods that are, more often than not, predominately African-American.

"Especially this time of year, two-thirds of our contacts are made in the dark," the chief said.

"These drivers could be blue, for all we know," said Fraternal Order of Police President Roger Webster. "Let's focus on crime and make these areas livable areas."

Webster called the report bunk and meaningless, and said he'll ask City Council to rescind the 2001 ordinance requiring officers to record circumstances of all stops, including race, age and gender of the driver and passengers.

But City Manager Valerie Lemmie said the city has already committed to the Collaborative Agreement, a racial profiling lawsuit settlement that also requires the city to track traffic stops. Even as the report was being released Friday, city officials were interviewing researchers to do the next phase of traffic stop analysis for 2002 and beyond.

The 2001 data, collected before Justice Department-mandated reforms of the Police Department, form a basis for comparison, researchers said. But they also acknowledged that the time period studied - after the riots and at the beginning of a so-called traffic enforcement "slowdown" by police - might not be typical.

David Harris, a University of Toledo law professor and author considered a national expert on racial profiling, questioned the study for a number of reasons, first because of the number of stops counted - about 7,200, made between July and December 2001. That's too few for six months in a city Cincinnati's size, he said.

"You have to wait for the next (report)," he said. "I would be very reluctant to draw hard conclusions on the basis of what I saw in that report."

ACLU lawyers were skeptical of the numbers, which came from contact cards filled out by officers and aren't independently verified. "The card is only as good as the officer filling it out," said Lawson. "No police officer is going to admit to a constitutional violation."

He proposed requiring police to offer the cards to motorists to sign, just like a traffic ticket.

Terry Peirano, a 30-year veteran who patrols in District 1 on a motorcycle, said people need to understand that the skin color of drivers pulled over is reflective of the neighborhood the traffic stop happens in. He estimates that he pulls over mostly white people now, in downtown and Mount Adams, but he stopped mostly black drivers when he used to work in Avondale.

And as for the study's questions about why officers sometimes give tickets and sometimes don't, he said he often considers the price tag of a moving violation: $104.

"If I've got a kid and I can yell at him and make my point, then I've done my job," Peirano said. "Why write somebody up for a broken taillight? If they couldn't afford the new taillight, they can't afford the ticket."

Writing a ticket the person can't afford starts a vicious cycle, he said. The driver doesn't pay, a warrant gets issued for his arrest, and he gets stopped again.

E-mail gkorte@enquirer.com and jprendergast@enquirer.com