The annual release of racial profiling reports here and across the state offers a rare glimpse into the inner workings of local law enforcement. Due to the 2001 Texas Racial Profiling Law, Fort Worth’s police department is required to compile traffic-related contact data as a means of identifying racial profiling practices. The Texas legislature passed the law to address racial profiling, which remains a lingering problem across the country.
The 72-page 2021 Racial Profiling Report was recently released by Del Carmen Consulting, a company that specializes in crime analysis and training law enforcement. Fort Worth police have long relied on independent groups to compile city data. Opening the report is a letter from Fort Worth police chief Neil Noakes to Mayor Mattie Parker and Fort Worth City Council. Nowhere in the one-page document does Noakes say what he’s doing to end his department’s long track record of disproportionately pulling over, searching, and arresting Blacks and Hispanics in Fort Worth.
In our story about Fort Worth police’s 2020 racial profiling report (“ Public Safety or Over-Policing,” Nov. 2020), we said, “In 2019, Black drivers accounted for 38% of vehicle searches. In 2009, 42% of vehicles searched had Black drivers, and numbers from 2002 show that Black residents accounted for nearly 40% of Fort Worth police department vehicle stops, even though the Black community at the time accounted for only 18.5% of drivers in Fort Worth. Black drivers were significantly overrepresented across a wide range of police interactions — without exception — between 2003 and 2019, according to Fort Worth police department records.”
Fort Worth police made 36,043 vehicle stops last year, according to the new report. Black males accounted for 28% of people pulled over, or 6,200 of 22,324 males, though Black males represented only 19% of the city’s population at the time. Male Hispanic representation among individuals pulled over closely tracks with that demographic’s 38% of the Fort Worth population, while white men (6,959) were underrepresented relative to their population (39%). Blacks (male and female) accounted for 34% of drivers pulled over for traffic violations, while Hispanics represented 39% of those pulled over.
Blacks made up 41% of 616 searches conducted by police. Hispanics were evenly represented, and whites were slightly underrepresented. Of the 244 arrests that resulted from a traffic stop, around half were of Black men or women (117). Hispanics were largely overrepresented in arrests that resulted in bodily harm to the driver (71% or 12 out of every 17).
“Regarding searches and arrests,” the report says, “the data showed that most searches took place among Blacks. Of the searches that did not produce contraband, most were of Blacks. Most arrests were made on Blacks.”
The numbers are just as stark in other, similarly sized Texas cities. In Dallas, Blacks represented 22% of the population at the time and 40% of 62,380 traffic contacts with police last year. Hispanics accounted for 40% of the population and 37% of car stops that year. Blacks represented 12% of Houston’s population and 36% of 355,312 traffic stops in that city, while Hispanics, who represented 18% of the population, accounted for 14% of police interactions on the road.
City leaders in Austin have set the goal of achieving zero racial disparities in traffic stops and citations and zero deaths at the hands of Austin police by 2023. In 2020, Blacks accounted for 8% of the city’s population and 15% (10,705) of 72,054 traffic stops. Hispanics, who represented 34% of Austin’s population, made up 37% of traffic-related interactions with police.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) maintains that “the practice of racial profiling by members of law enforcement at the federal, state, and local levels remains a widespread and pervasive problem throughout the United States, impacting the lives of millions of people in African American, Asian, Latino, South Asian, Arab, and Muslim communities.”
The main reason the problem persists, the ACLU says, is due to the failure of national leadership to pass legislation that bans racial profiling by federal, state, or local law enforcement. At least one major American city is being proactive. In January, Philadelphia City Council banned low-level traffic stops. The Driving Equity Act — the first of its kind for a major city — forbids officers from pulling over drivers for having a single broken taillight or a missing inspection sticker or for any other minor driving infraction. Instead, officers are directed to mail tickets or leave citations on parked cars. The idea behind the law is to reduce the frequency of interactions between police officers and communities of color as a means of rebuilding trust between the communities and law enforcement.
Alex del Carmen, author of the new report, is part of a Fort Worth police review panel — unrelated to the racial profiling report — that is tasked with reviewing policing policies and practices and providing recommendations to improve and retain public trust. The 2019 killing of Atatiana Jefferson, a Black woman, in her own home by a white male officer prompted the ongoing reform effort. In 2020, the four-person panel released preliminary findings that said many Fort Worthians were concerned about the frequency of people of color being targeted by police stops.
“We saw quite a bit of calls where officers used foul language,” del Carmen told me at the time. “We understand officers are working with issues that are emotional. We felt that, and science shows, any time officers use foul language, it escalates the response from the other person. For us, it is not only an issue of politeness: It is a potential cause of escalation during police encounters.”
Del Carmen said in a recent email that the panel’s work still continues, and a report that broadly examines policing habits and provides recommendations to improve police-community relations is scheduled to be released later this spring. Fort Worthians who believe they have been racially profiled by Fort Worth police can file complaints via email (FWPD_InternalAffairs@fortworthtexas.gov) or by calling 817-392-4270.
