Police monitor finds Seattle police conducted fewest on-record stops in 2021

The Seattle Police Monitor, appointed by the U.S. District Court in oversight of the Seattle Police Department’s consent decree, has found that, on data collection and analysis of Terry stops in 2021 and years prior, SPD performed the fewest number of stops on record, racial minorities were more likely to be stopped, and the white population was more likely to be in possession of a firearm.

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A Terry stop refers to law enforcement’s ability to perform an investigation upon reasonable suspicion. The disparity of frequency of Terry stops among racial demographics was a predicate for the Department of Justice’s ruling on its consent decree in July 2012, noting SPD’s “inadequate supervision and training of officers” and insufficient data collection to “self assess.”

A report released Tuesday provides summary and analysis of SPD’s stops and detentions in 2021. The report is part of a series of “community engagement sessions” intended to inform final review of the decree.

It finds that SPD conducted 4,282 Terry stops in 2021, noting that number is 30% below 2020 (6,157), and 52% below the recorded high in 2018 (8,883).

It goes on to outline frequency of stops among racial demographics between 2015 and 2020. As a proportion of total stops between 2018 and 2020, 33% were Black, 56% white, 4% Asian, 3% Native American. Hispanic ends as a racial category in 2019. “Unknown” is excluded as a category.

“Undoubtedly, the characteristics of the population of stopped subjects in 2018 through 2020 do not match the Seattle population, as has been found previously,” the report notes.

Separate data on frisks is used to note a decrease in frisk rates among racial minorities when compared with the white population.

“Differences in frisk rates across races have reduced over time, from a gap of 11 percentage points in 2015 to 5 percentage points in 2020. Frisk rates for stopped individuals ranged 7% across races, with a low of 20% for White subjects to a high of 27% for Asian and Black subjects, between 2018 and 2020,” the report reads.

As explanation of Terry stops’ inconsistencies when compared with general population demographics, the report goes to great length to introduce mitigating factors which point away from racial profiling and bias as reason for the discrepancy.

“In a variety of contexts in current law, racial disparities by themselves do not necessarily prove bias by individual police officers or agencies – as they operate within the context of social factors that may contribute to disparities,” the report adds.

“Population-based analyses present insights but also do not, by themselves, tell a complete story regarding disparity or potential bias, since other sociological factors may impact policing disparities as they do in other areas of society.”

“Neither the Consent Decree nor the Court-approved policies on stops and bias-free policing demand that SPD immediately stop practices that it may determine are linked to disparate impacts.”

That summary is contextualized with the caveat that “while disparity analyses may have limited ability to determine bias, this does not mean disparity findings lack meaning or import.”

Other notable findings from the report include that white subjects were most likely to be in possession of a weapon upon a Terry stop, “10 percentage points higher than frisks of Black individuals.”

As an ultimate recommendation, the report offers “re-engagement” with the Community Police Commission, another court appointed group tasked with providing community feedback on police reform. The report “lauds” SPD’s data collection and “maturation” as it relates to identifying racial bias among officers.

“Whereas SPD lacked the ability to ‘self-assess’ regarding disparities at the start of the Consent Decree, it is now a leader in policing analytics and regularly provides guidance to other police departments in this area and others.”

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