California Police More Than Twice As Likely To Use Force Against Black People

Annual report from state board found Latino and Black residents disproportionately affected by ongoing ‘pretextual stops’

By Sam Levin, The Guardian

California police were more than twice as likely to use force against Black residents than white residents during traffic and pedestrian stops in 2021, according to a new report on racial profiling.

The annual report from a state board also found that law enforcement searched Black people at 2.2 times the rate of white people, and that Black youths ages 15 to 17 were searched at nearly six times the rate of white teenagers. Latino residents were stopped and subjected to force at 1.4 times the rate of white people, and Latino youths were searched at nearly four times the rate of white youths.

The disproportionate searches of Black and Latino people have persisted despite the fact that from 2019 to 2021, officers were least likely to find contraband on members of those groups compared with white people, the report said.

California’s racial and identity profiling advisory board gathered data on stops by officers from 58 law enforcement agencies in 2021, and the findings are based on the officers’ perceptions of the race, ethnicity, gender and disability status of people they stop. The data suggests that racial profiling remains a systemic problem in the state, particularly with ongoing “pretextual stops”, when officers use minor violations as a pretext to investigate someone or launch a search that would otherwise not be justified.