Durham Police Pull Over Black Men at Higher Rates

Advocacy groups said on Friday that they were not surprised after the Durham Police Department released a report showing evidence of disproportionate traffic stops for African American men.

The study looked at traffic stop data between 2010 and 2015 and determined that Durham Police Officers pull over black men at disproportionate rates, especially during the daytime. The study was conducted by RTI international, a non-profit research institute.

Mark-Anthony Middleton, member of the Durham C.A.N. Clergy caucus, said that this information was not news to him.

“Turns out that we weren’t hallucinating about racial profiling, turns out that we did have some issues,” said Middleton. “So we are very thankful for RTI coming in and confirming, I guess, at a higher level, what we already knew both anecdotally and what was documented.”

Interim Durham Police Chief Larry Smith said the police department must accept the findings of the study and “ensure that bias of any kind is never a part of police operations.” In response, Durham Police have equipped more cars with cameras, will review officers traffic stops data more often and are requiring a signed form for all consent searches at traffic stops.

The reported noted that black men were more disproportionately pulled over during the day than at night but that this discrepancy had been falling over the last several years, which Smith attributed to changes in police policies. Black men in Durham were still about 50% more likely to be pulled over at any time of the day than white men.

The report did not find any racial dispartity among female drivers.

The FADE Coalition in Durham, which stands for fostering alternative drug enforcement, submitted policy recommendations to the Durham Police Department in a letter back in October 2013.

Clarence Birkhead, Durham Committee on the Affairs of Black People, said they still supported those polices.

“We’ve said this for the last four years, so some of those recommendations have been put into place and our city council has taken steps to ensure that those recommendations are in place today but there is still much work to be done,” said Birkhead.

The reported admitted that the HEAT team, which focuses on drug, vice and gang violence, was responsible for the greatest disproportion of traffic stops. In the same letter, the FADE coalition described the HEAT team as representing an ongoing civil rights violation against Durham’s African American population.

While the report recognized the existence of a racial disparity, it did not give an explanation for the bias, said David Hall with the Southern Coalition for Social Justice.

“They seemed to be surprised that there was bias in their policing,” said Hall. “They said that they knew that they had disparate numbers but they believed they could have disparate numbers without bias. They also have no explanation to why they have bias because it wasn’t included in the report.”

The Durham Police Department is currently in the process of selecting a new police chief. Middleton said this was an opportunity for Durham to do a fundamental review of policing in the city.

“We have a police chief seat that is open right now, so we need to make sure that the next person that comes in, is brought into strategies and polices that will transform our police department.”

In December a new website was launched that tracks the demographic stop and search patterns of North Carolina law enforcement.