Iowa City police to continue study that found racial disparity in traffic stops

IOWA CITY - The Iowa City Police Department will expand an ongoing study that found minority drivers were more likely to be stopped, searched and arrested by police officers than white and Asian motorists.

Police Chief Sam Hargadine is recommending data from traffic stops in 2013 and 2014 be given to St. Ambrose University professor Christopher Barnum to complement his analysis of six previous years' worth of information.

Hargadine also wants additional data to be collected starting next year, including the exact location of traffic stops and the reason for an arrest.

The uneven rate with which people of color come into contact with law enforcement, known as disproportionate minority contact, has been debated in the Iowa City community in recent years.

It's a situation that occurs nationwide, and that has been in the international spotlight after the shooting death of an unarmed black teenager by a white police officer in Ferguson, Mo., in early August.

Iowa City Council member Kingsley Botchway II said what seems to have happened in Ferguson is people of color had long-standing problems with how they were treated by police officers, and the shooting was the last straw for the largely black community.

'And my fear is that could happen in Iowa City,” he said.

When the results of Barnum's study were presented to the City Council in June, Botchway asked for further analysis because Barnum said he didn't have enough information to say whether racial bias was at play in the disproportionate traffic stops in Iowa City.

One of the things Barnum said he needed to know was whether a vehicle search resulted from a request or if officers had probable cause and did not need a driver's permission. That information will be collected starting in January.

Barnum found that in addition to being stopped at a disproportionate rate, minority drivers were 2.8 times more likely to be arrested on a traffic stop and 3.45 times more likely to be asked by an officer to have their vehicles searched than white and Asian drivers, who were grouped together as non-minorities for the study.

Hargadine said the goals of the continued study are to decrease the disproportionality and to improve trust with the community.

Iowa City police officers were not told of the study, which started in 2005. Now they know, and Barnum said that usually changes behavior.

In June, Hargadine said the results of the study were a concern but he did not believe his officers had any ill intent. He and Barnum said the time period with the highest rate of disproportionate traffic stops, from 2010 to 2012, followed increased police activity in southeast Iowa City after concerns of violence in the area.

The percentage of the population that is a racial minority is higher in southeast Iowa City than elsewhere in town.

'We do participate in hot-spot policing,” Hargadine said Friday. 'If there's problems in town, we are expected to go in and take care of it.”

The City Council already has said it wants the study to continue, and Assistant City Manager Geoff Fruin said his office also is supportive.

'The whole issue of disproportionate minority contact is one that the community has clearly communicated a strong interest in,” Fruin said. 'And when you're discussing an issue like that, it's very valuable to have facts and statistics to guide those discussions.”

And while Fruin and Hargadine noted that Iowa City began its study nearly a decade ago, Fruin said the events in Ferguson this summer 'certainly increased the amount of public discussion and perhaps scrutiny of the numbers here, which I think can be very healthy.”

Botchway recently wrote a guest column for The Gazette in which he said as an African-American father, he will one day have to talk to his son about the prejudices he will face, including being 'stopped and questioned by law enforcement no matter where you go. Over and over again.”

Botchway said Friday he wanted to emphasize that the majority of police officers do a good job. But what he hears most often from people of color in Iowa City is they are not always treated with respect by law enforcement.

Barnum's fee would be $10,000 for the 2013-14 analysis and another $10,000 for the review of the 2015 data, Hargadine said.