Local Pedestrian Stop Data and Racial Disparities

 
Durl Kruse of Champaign Urbana Citizens for Peace and Justice wrote a guest commentary in today's News-Gazette noting a recent Illinois Department of Transportation study (data available here, and executive summary here and a slideshow from another presentation of the information here) that shows vast racial disparities in pedestrian police stops. Here's an excerpt:

African-Americans compose 14.83 percent of Urbana's and 13.5 percent of Champaign's population; yet they total 58 percent of Urbana's and 42 percent of Champaign's pedestrian stops. This percentage discrepancy between population and stops might reasonably be explained by crime rates and locations of crimes. On the other hand, less justifiable reasons such as targeting, over-policing certain neighborhoods or profiling individuals based on skin color could also be partial explanations.

When comparing the actual number of local African-American pedestrian stops with other Illinois communities, a dramatic and disturbing picture emerges.

Excluding Chicago because of its population size, Urbana with 377 stops ranks second and Champaign with 322 stops ranks third only behind Cicero (529 stops) with the highest number of African-American stops in the state. That's correct, second and third. In 2016, only five other cities in the state reported more than 150 African-American pedestrian stops: DeKalb, Evanston, Joliet, Calument City and Oak Park.

More surprising is the fact that Peoria (129 stops), Springfield (116 stops), Decatur (51 stops), and Rockford (46 stops) had a combined total of 302 African-American pedestrian stops, 75 fewer than Urbana and 20 fewer than Champaign.

This difference is magnified when accounting for the African-American population of each community. Peoria, Springfield, Decatur and Rockford have a combined African-American population of 72,091, nearly 13.5 times greater than Urbana (5,344) and 7.8 times greater than Champaign (9,199). Together, these four cities have fewer African-American pedestrian stops than either Champaign or Urbana, even though their collective African-American population is eight to 13 times larger.

Also notable is the rate difference of stops between local Caucasian and African-American pedestrians. Caucasians are stopped at a rate of 8 and 9 per thousand in Champaign and Urbana, while African-Americans are stopped at a rate of 35 and 70 per thousand. A discrepancy of this magnitude is troubling.

The full commentary is available here. CUCPJ's has a facebook group that can be joined here.