The long-awaited analysis of Cincinnati Police traffic stops found some signs of unequal treatment but no clear-cut evidence of racially biased policing. Some findings were just the opposite of what would be expected if cops were singling out blacks for harassment or worse.

THE REPORT

• Monitor's Report on University of Cincinnati Police Vehicle Stop Study

If such reporting is worth the effort - and it is - Cincinnati Police and the researchers need to add more depth to officers' reports and methods of interpreting traffic stops. New technology can help make reporting less onerous. Even then, this will never be an exact science. But it can help police re-examine operations, flag any cops with a bias problem and educate the community to legitimate reasons for racial disparities in police statistics.

University of Cincinnati Professors John E. Eck and Lin Liu studied police traffic stop reports for the July to December 2001 period, and court-appointed monitor Saul Green released his 16-page reactions. He applauded the independent study as a helpful first benchmark and called for more correlations - the officer's race, reasons for the stop, location and sanctions. Are blacks stopped for being "out of place" in white or border areas? Green noted residents' calls for more police presence and the police strategy of targeting crime "hot spots" can lead to higher numbers of traffic stops of blacks.

Police Chief Tom Streicher called the report inconclusive at best and said some disparities are not surprising, given that of all victims, black or white, who report crimes here, 87 percent say the offender was black.

The researchers found black drivers were more likely to be pulled over for equipment violations, but less likely to be cited. Traffic stops were likely to be longer for black drivers, but blacks are likely to have more occupants in the car. Officers asked for a consent search of 7.6 percent of black drivers and only 3.3 percent of whites, but blacks stopped were carrying contraband with about the same frequency as whites (about 25 percent). If police were targeting blacks, we would expect officers would be searching more blacks found without contraband.

Both the report and Green's commentary are posted on the Cincinnati Police Department's link on the City of Cincinnati Web site. Its release makes it even harder to understand why a court gag order was imposed on it until after the recent city council elections. However limited the findings, the Cincinnati Police Department and its collaborative partners can use it to advance the dialogue on making Cincinnati policing as bias-free as possible.