According to the Mid-Missouri Civil Liberties Association, data has shown that in recent years African American drivers in Columbia are searched at nearly five times the rate of white drivers. The data also shows that the disproportion between white and black drivers for consent searches has dropped to 7 percent, which is near equity.
Don Love is a board member of MOCLA and spoke at the Daniel Boone Regional Library on Monday night to discuss this issue. Love has been studying this topic for ten years and has been recently focusing on consent search data.
Love said in order to describe the disproportions found, the data has to be sorted to find valid explanations. He said that data can be difficult to interpret at times.
“It’s a long, slow, complicated process and the more you’re paying attention to the data, the more difficult it is,” Love said. “But if people will at least trust those of us who are looking at the data to point them in the right direction I think the progress will be satisfying.”
One of the main issues Love addressed at his presentation was data from the 2018 post-stop disparities in the Florissant Police Department. African Americans were 24% of the population and whites were 72%, yet African Americans experienced 78% of the overall stops, and whites accounted for only 21% of stops. To simplify that, African Americans are stopped at 3.91 times the rate of what you would expect, versus .2 times the rate for whites.
After interpreting this data, Love said it is the agency’s responsibility to give explanations for these disproportions shown in the data, but it is also the people’s responsibility to read the data.
“There is a danger that people won’t take advantage of the data that’s there,” Love said. “That it’s very easy for someone to think that their perspective is enough proof they need for whatever opinion they have. But we need everybody to be looking for some sort of objective criteria that they can agree on and then use as a basis for discussion.”
Love said Columbia is addressing these racial disparities in a positive way.
“Of all the communities I see in Missouri, Columbia is doing much more than anybody else. So, it’s hard to argue against that,” Love said.
MOCLA is an independent association that focuses on the preservation and advancement of civil rights and liberties in Missouri.