West says data omits key factors
By Ethan Smith
Published in News on January 15, 2016 1:46 PM
Goldsboro Police Chief Mike West recently confirmed numbers reported by an online database that say minorities are 1,700 percent more likely than whites to be searched during a traffic stop in Goldsboro, but said the data leaves out several key factors such as the neighborhoods in which the traffic stops occur.
"There may be a higher percentage of non-whites searched that doesn't necessarily reflect the population," West said. "I'll use the comparison, I guess, of if 60 percent of the population is non-white, and out of our traffic stops, if that's pretty consistent with the number of stops on non-whites, the percentage of those searches might be elevated a little bit. At first glance it might look like there's more chance of being searched just because you're strictly a non-white, so that may be a little bit high, but the problem I have with all this raw data is that it doesn't say the location all these traffic stops took place, or the time of the day the traffic stop took place."
West said the majority of traffic stops occur during evening and night time hours, and traffic stops were most likely to occur on Goldsboro's main thoroughfares such as Berkeley Boulevard or Ash Street or in high-crime areas of Goldsboro.
"A lot of people think traffic stops are going to be a result of our traffic officers running up and down the highway looking for speeding violations, DWIs (driving while intoxicated) and stuff like that, and with trying to get our traffic unit and other officers to concentrate in the areas where a lot of the crime is occurring, traffic stops are a toll that we use to work those areas," West said. "Looking at it overall, if you have more crime going on in certain parts of the city that's got more minorities, then the numbers are going to reflect that. It's not that we're just riding the streets stopping people just for speeding and DWIs and equipment violations. It's that we're in areas where there's a high rate of crime, and we're just using traffic stops as a tool to help us either prevent crime or catch the criminals or people that we know have warrants because officers are familiar with them. That's going to put us in those areas and then traffic stops are going to be the tools that get us one step closer to making an apprehension or preventing a crime."
The original data was reported by opendatapolicingnc.com, which is a website developed by the Southern Coalition for Social Justice in partnership with the Department of Justice.
"We report our numbers to the SBI (State Bureau of Investigation), and then that's where those numbers are pulled by this third party," West said. "Our numbers are matching up with what they are pulling from."
West said 4 percent of all traffic stops in Goldsboro result in searches being conducted. When a search is conducted, illegal guns, drugs or other contraband is discovered 33 percent of the time.
While Goldsboro's population is 54 percent black and roughly 60 percent non-white -- which includes the black population -- Goldsboro's police department is 16 percent black.
"Looking through the data to see where the 1,700 percent came from, the data that I was looking at, the percentage of our traffic stops that involve minorities pretty closely reflects the population," West said.
But while the traffic stops themselves reflect the population demographics of Goldsboro, the number of searches conducted after those stops is what disproportionately affects minorities.
Often times a vehicle is pulled over for what is called an equipment violation, which West said consists of things such as a taillight being out, a license plate light not working, a headlight being out, having windows that are too heavily tinted and more.
After a stop occurs, there are several criteria that must be met to give an officer the right to search a vehicle, West said.
The primary way officers gain the right to search a vehicle is through having the person who was pulled over consent to a search.
West said that if the officer is standing by the vehicle and he sees anything inside it, like casings, bullets, an open container or smells a suspicious odor, the officer would have cause to search the vehicle.
Regardless, West said no complaints had been filed against the Goldsboro Police Department accusing it of profiling.
"Any complaint that comes in, just a single complaint coming in that says there's a possibility that one of the officers is profiling is one too many," West said. "Just looking at the data to see how they came up with the 1,700 percent, I really didn't see anything that said that officers are out here profiling."