San Jose Police Collect, But Don’t Analyze Racial Data
/Back in 1999, the San Jose Police Department led the charge in collecting racial data about the people it stops and arrests.
Original figures, based on a few months of traffic stops, implied racial profiling: black people made up 4.5 percent of the population but 7 percent of drivers stopped, versus white people who made up 43 percent of the population but 29 percent of stops.
“The community asked for the numbers and we gave them,” then-Chief William Lansdowne said at the time. “Up until this point, all we had were anecdotes. We can’t be afraid to look at the statistics.”
So is the SJPD now afraid? The department stopped analyzing such information in 2008, according to a recent report by the San Francisco Chronicle. When the newspaper made a public records request for the last five years of racial data, police said it would cost $1,820—broken down to $91 an hour for 20 hours of work.
