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This article gives details and facts about the stop and frisk law

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stop and frisk law in new york - how can it affect my case?

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Stop and Frisk Law in New York - How Can It Affect My Case? - HG.org

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The stop and frisk laws are in contention because of privacy and rights against discrimination in various cities in the state of New York, and this has led to the ban of the activities by police offic

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This article explains how many black women, even more than black men are shot and killed by the police.

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Blacks, especially women, are more likely to have been unarmed when killed by police than non-blacks, and that risk appears to increase in police departments with a greater presence of non-white officers, according to a new study of nationwide data from Washington University in St. Louis.

A key finding of the study is that nearly 60 percent of black women killed by police were unarmed at the time of the interaction.

The study is the first in a series of reports from the ongoing Fatal Interactions with Police (FIPS) research project, which includes contributions from public health and biostatistics experts at hospitals and universities, including Saint Louis University, New York University and Harvard University.

While the odds of being killed by police when unarmed were about the same for black and white males, the high percentage of unarmed black women killed by police significantly increased the overall odds for unarmed blacks.

"Our analysis finds that the 'hands up, don't shoot' slogan of the post-Ferguson movement becomes most relevant when you also 'say her name,'" said lead researcher Odis Johnson, associate professor of education and of sociology, both in Arts & Sciences.

"Nonetheless, the odds of an unarmed fatality for black Americans as a whole was a staggering 6.6-to-1, more than double the odds found in several other national studies completed in recent decades."

The "say her name" social movement was launched in 2015 to draw attention to the death of Chicago resident Rekia Boyd and other unarmed black women killed during interactions with police. This study is the first to provide hard data to back up the movement's assertion that black women face a high risk of being killed by police.

The study also suggests that many tactics implemented to curb police violence, such as the use of body cameras and diversifying police forces by adding more non-white officers, have done little to reduce the number of people killed in police interactions.

"Agencies with more officers of color had significantly increased odds of committing unarmed fatalities, suggesting that current levels of agency diversity are not capable of achieving change," Johnson said. "We recommend caution in interpreting this result since our data does not track the race of the police officers connected to each fatality. Thus, we are unable to say whether the actions of officers of color directly increase the odds of unarmed fatalities for racial/ethnic groups."

The project plans to issue two more reports on related findings in coming months as it prepares to host a national symposium, titled " The Color of Policing Symposium (COPS): Youth, Education and Activism, " April 19-20 at Washington University.

The FIPS database includes details on about 1,700 fatal interactions with police that occurred in jurisdictions across the United States during a 20-month time period from May 2013 to January 2015.

It estimates the demographic odds of a fatality occurring during an interaction with police based on the location of the interaction and the characteristics of the likely responding law enforcement agency.

Other findings from the first report include:

Nearly 94 percent of those killed by police are men; about 46 percent are white; about 22 percent had a history of drug abuse or mental illness.

The ages of unarmed people killed by police in the database range from 5 to more than 100 years old, including people who were 101, 103 and 107.

More than 57 percent of African American women were killed while unarmed; white males were the least likely to have been unarmed when killed at just under 20 percent.

Much more than a listing of fatal police interactions around the country, the FIPS database also contains a wealth of related demographic and law enforcement data that allows the deaths to be analyzed in the context of local conditions. Database researchers gathered background on each case through an array of public records, including media accounts, death certificates and obituaries.

In addition to U.S. Census statistics on the location where the fatality occurred, FIPS includes data about local law enforcement practices and police staffing drawn from the Law Enforcement Management and Administrative Survey ( LEMAS), and crime statistics from the FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting program.

Collected by the Bureau of Justice Statistics from about 2,800 state and local law enforcement agencies, the LEMAS data offers details on a wide range of topics: agency responsibilities, operating expenditures, job functions of sworn and civilian employees, officer salaries and special pay, demographic characteristics of officers, weapons and armor policies, education and training requirements, computers and information systems, vehicles, special units, and community policing activities.

The FIPS database project was supported by Public Health Cubed Seed Funding from the Institute of Public Health at Washington University. Other researchers involved in the project include Cassandra Arroyo-Johnson, assistant professor of surgery, Washington University School of Medicine (WUSM); Melody Goodman, interim chair the Department of Biostatistics at New York University; Marcello Pagano, professor statistical computing at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health; Keon L. Gilbert, associate professor in the College of Public Health and Social Justice at Saint Louis University; Christopher St. Vil, Assistant Professor of Social Work at SUNY Buffalo; David de la Cerda, doctoral student at Wake Forest University; and Nicole Ackerman, a statistical data analyst in the WUSM Public Health Sciences Division.

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Police kill unarmed blacks more often, especially when they are women, study finds | The Source | Washington University in St. Louis

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Blacks, especially women, are more likely to have been unarmed when killed by police than non-blacks, and that risk appears to increase in police departments with a greater presence of non-white officers, according to a new study of nationwide data from Washington University in St. Louis.

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This shows many points of view of racial profiling and how it is more of a white police problem, rather than a black people problem. So it is the other side of my argument.

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Police officers of all races-not just white ones-disproportionately kill African American suspects, according to a new study that points to a need for policing and legal reforms.

"...white officers are no more likely to use lethal force against minorities than nonwhite officers."

Researchers looked at every use of deadly force by officers across the United States and discovered that the killing of black suspects is a police problem, not a white police problem. Further, the killing of unarmed suspects of any race is extremely rare.

"There might be some bad apples in the police department, but white officers are no more likely to use lethal force against minorities than nonwhite officers," says Charles Menifield, dean of the School of Public Affairs and Administration (SPAA) at Rutgers University-Newark, and lead author of the paper, which appears in Public Administration Review.

"Still, the killings are no less racist but will require a very different set of remedies if we are to change the culture and stop this from happening."

For the study, Menifield and colleagues created a database of all confirmed uses of deadly force by police in the United States in 2014 and 2015, the most recent years for which sufficient data were available.

The findings show that police kill African Americans more than twice as often as the general population. While only about 12 percent of the American population is black, 28 percent of people killed during this two-year period were black, according to the research, which also found that Latinos were killed slightly more than would be expected and white citizens less often.

The study also found that less than 1 percent of victims of police killings were unarmed. Across all racial groups, 65.3 percent of those killed possessed a firearm at the time of their death.

"The gun could be in their car, or on them, but it was there at the time they were killed," says Menifield. "This shouldn't be surprising because of the availability and ease of getting a gun in the United States."

High-profile killings of unarmed black men in the last few years-like that of 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014, which gave rise to the Black Lives Matter movement-have led many to speculate that white officers may target nonwhite suspects with lethal force, Menifield says.

The new research shows, however, that white police officers actually kill black and other minority suspects at lower rates than would be expected if killings were randomly distributed among officers of all races.

The disproportionate killing of black men occurs, according to the researchers, because of the institutional and organizational racism in police departments and the criminal justice system's targeting minority communities with policies-like stop and frisk and the war on drugs-that have more destructive effects.

"The question of the basic causes of racial disparities in police killings has profound real-world implications for policing a diverse society," Menifield says, suggesting that appropriate reforms for a fundamentally institutional problem would target racism in police department practices and criminal policy that result in over policing of minority populations.

"Today, we have politicians who are arguing for tougher stances on immigration," Menifield says. "These things have a way of trickling down to other things like tougher sentences on crime and policies that have a disparate impact on minority communities."

Addressing the problem will not be easy. Menifield says the US Department of Justice needs to enforce the Death in Custody Reporting Act of 2013 that requires police organizations to report data on police killings. This data will allow researchers to thoroughly investigate each case and determine if other variables are driving police behavior.

In addition, he says, police departments need to bring in external reviewers to examine all of their institutional practices including hiring, promotions, and training. The long‐running racial discrepancies in the way that police officers apply force to suspects have significantly eroded trust between law enforcement and the public whom they serve, the researchers argue.

"There is definitely a problem when one race of people are being killed by police at much higher rates than other populations," Menifield says. "This unfortunate state of affairs is unlikely to improve until fundamental changes in public policy and policing are undertaken."

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Killing of black suspects is more than a 'white police problem' - Futurity

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Police officers of all races-not just white ones-disproportionately kill African American suspects, according to a new study that points to a need for policing and legal reforms. "...white officers are no more likely to use lethal force against minorities than nonwhite officers."

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This video shows the counter argument of racial profiling

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Trump touts 'stop and frisk' impact in New York

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This video shows how bystanders of racial profiling react and feel

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Black Customer Racially Profiled In High End Store | What Would You Do? | WWYD

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While shopping at a high end clothing store, a black customer is racially profiled and harassed by a white employee. -- Watch brand new WWYD episodes on Friday at 9PM on ABC (starting June 16)! ►https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUlwc... Subscribe to WWYD ► http://bit.ly/WWYDSubs Check out some of the Best WWYD? Episodes ► https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Htytu...

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This video shows that anybody of color can be racially profiled. No matter how much money you have, who you know, or who you are, it all depends on one thing. The color of your skin.

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Zendaya gets Racially Profiled by Supermarket Clerk - The Drop Presented by ADD

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This picture presents people protesting the stop and frisk law, which I do believe is very unnessary.

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This shows how people of color have to fear their lives on the daily.

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This website gives some unbelievable facts about racial profiling.

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Racial profiling occurs when a judgment is made about an individual based on the color of their skin or the appearance of a specific ethnicity. It is a practice that can be performed by anyone, but in terms of statistics collection, it is a subject matter that is tracked by law enforcement officials.

The United States has held that racial profiling violates the Constitutional requirement that all people be accorded an equal protection under the law.

Not only does racial profiling offer evidence of engrained personal bias, it is often encouraged by misguided policies or incentives that promote higher arrest rates, fine rates, or other enforcement strategies.

To some, this may be a subject that is "no big deal." These racial profiling statistics prove otherwise.

The Racial Profiling Statistics that Everyone Needs to Know

1. African-American/Black drivers are twice as likely (4.5% vs. 2.1%) to be arrested during a traffic stop. (The Leadership Conference)

2. 65% of Hispanic drivers are likely to receive a ticket during a traffic stop. This is higher than Caucasian/White drivers (56%) or African-American/Black drivers (55.8%). (The Leadership Conference)

3. Whites/Caucasians are twice more likely to receive a verbal warning for their conduct in a vehicle when compared to Blacks/African-Americans. (The Leadership Conference)

4. Blacks/African-Americans are 3 times more likely to be searched during a police stop as a motorist compared to Whites/Caucasians. Hispanics are 2.5 times more likely to be searched during a police stop compared to Whites/Caucasians. (The Leadership Conference)

5. A study of State Police conduct in Arizona showed that the highway patrol was 3.5 times more likely to search a stopped Native American and 2.5 times more likely to search a stopped African-American/Black or Hispanic individual when compared to Whites/ Caucasians. (The Leadership Conference)

6. The probability of being black, unarmed, and shot by police is about 3.49 times the probability of being white, unarmed, and shot by police on average. (Vanity Fair)

7. When factoring in threat levels, black Americans who are fatally shot by police are less likely to be posing an imminent lethal threat to officers at the moment they are killed than white Americans fatally shot by police. (Washington Post/ Vanity Fair)

8. An analysis of lethal force used by police in 2015 found no correlation between the level of violent crime in some area and that area's police killing rates. (Vanity Fair)

9. In San Francisco, although black people accounted for less than 15% of all traffic stops in 2015, they accounted for over 42% of all non-consent searches which occurred following the stop. Blacks/African-Americans and Hispanics also had the lowest rates of contraband recovered. (Vanity Fair)

10. African-Americans/Blacks are twice as likely as Whites/Caucasians to be searched during a vehicle stop as a driver, even after controlling for non-race variables such as the reason why the stop was initiated. They are also found to be in possession of contraband 26% less often than Whites/Caucasians. (Vanity Fair)

11. In Chicago, the city's own data shows that Blacks/African-Americans and Hispanics were searched 4 times more often than Whites/Caucasians, but contraband was found in the possession of white drivers twice as often. (Vanity Fair)

12. In 4 states in the US, police officers are more likely to stop Black drivers for no discernible reason. They are also more likely to use force if the driver is Black, even when physical resistance is not encountered. (New York Times)

13. The NYPD conducted 4.4 million stop and frisk searches between January 2004 and June 2012 before the practice was determined to be a violation of Constitutional rights. 88% of those stop and frisk searches resulted in no further action. 83% of those who were stopped were either Black or Hispanic, even though the two groups combined make up less than half of the population in the city. (Vanity Fair)

14. Ferguson, Missouri police were found to be violating Constitutional rights by the Department of Justice, but 1,581 police departments in the United States arrest Blacks/African-Americans at rates that are even more skewed. (USA Today)

15. At least 70 police departments in the United States arrest Blacks/African-Americans at 10 times the rate they arrest people who are not black. (USA Today)

16. In Dearborn, MI about 4% of the population is not white, but people who are not white make up more than half of all the arrests which occur. From 2011-2012, Dearborn police reported arresting 4,500 individuals who were African-American/Black, which was 500 more people in that racial category than actually lived in the city. (USA Today)

17. A study in Cincinnati found that black drivers had longer stops and higher search rates than white drivers. When researchers matched stops involving black drivers with similarly situated white drivers, those who were stopped at the same time, place, and context had no differences. (NIJ)

18. A Department of Justice investigation into the Seattle Police Department found that more than half of the cases that involved unnecessary or excessive use of force involved minorities. The investigation also found that, regardless of race or ethnicity, police were using force unconstitutionally in about 1 in every 5 incidents. (Vanity Fair)

19. A governor's task force that examined police-on-police shootings found that 90% of off-duty police officers that were killed by other police officers in a case of mistaken identity since 1982 were either Black or Latino. (New York Times)

20. In a study of police practices in Oakland, CA officers handcuffed 2,890 African-Americans/Blacks, but did not arrest them, in a 13-month period. In the same period of time, only 193 Caucasians/Whites were handcuffed without arrest. When Oakland police officers pulled over a vehicle, but didn't arrest anyone, 72 white people were handcuffed, but so were 1,446 African-Americans/Blacks. (Washington Post)

21. In simulations, police officers take an extra 0.23 seconds on average before firing at a Black suspect compared to firing at a white suspect who is unarmed. (Washington State University)

22. In Los Angeles, the Black stop rate is 3,400 stops higher than the White stop rate, while the Hispanic stop rate was almost 360 stops higher per 10,000 residents. (The Leadership Council)

23. Relative to stopped Whites, stopped Blacks in LA were 127% more likely to be frisked and Hispanics were 43% more likely to be frisked. Blacks were also 76% more likely to be searched compared to Whites. (The Leadership Council)

24. Only 173 police departments out of 3,538 that were examined arrested Black people at a rate that was equal or lower than other racial groups. (USA Today)

Racial Profiling Trends and Analysis

Racial profiling statistics are often seen in the eye of the beholder. Yet there is plenty of research data and facts to suggest that there is a certain potential bias in policing when it comes to minority population. Many propose that this is due to a few "bad" officers.

However, the clear trend is that these instances are becoming more prominent with each passing year. This may be partly due to the increase of smart phones and social media. Today, many of these incidents are getting filmed and instantly spread across mediums like Facebook and Twitter. Thirty years ago, this was not the case.

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24 Frightening Racial Profiling Statistics

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Racial profiling occurs when a judgment is made about an individual based on the color of their skin or the appearance of a specific ethnicity. It is a practice that can be performed by anyone, but in terms of statistics collection, it is a subject matter that is tracked by law enforcement officials.

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This picture shows how the black man has the thought in mind that they are likely to get pulled over and killed, while the white man drives without a worry in mind

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This picture shows how people of color have to always sjow their hands around police because they may just have been ¨feared for their lives¨

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This image portrays a man being stopped by the police

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This article is for racial profiling and gives reasons why racial profiling is helpful to police and citizens

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Los Angeles' perennial critics of the cops are going to have to decide: Do they want policing that mirrors the demographics of the city or goes after criminals? They cannot have it both ways.

Recently released data compiled by the Los Angeles Police Department as part of a federal consent decree show that the city's officers are more likely to ask black and Latino drivers to step out of their cars after stopping them than their white counterparts. Once out of their cars, members of these minorities are more likely to be patted down or searched. Ipso facto, say the critics, L.A. cops discriminate against minorities.

Not so fast. To the charge that the police have "too many" law enforcement interactions with minorities, the question must always be: "Too many" compared to what? To compare stop, search and arrest data to demographics, as cop critics would have us do, is absurd. The police don't formulate their crime strategies based on census findings; they go where the crime is.

What's more, an officer's decision to ask a person to step out of a car or to search that person is triggered by behavioral and contextual cues -- nervousness, threatening behavior, resemblance to a suspect, absence of a license and car registration, tinted windows, among others -- that are not even remotely captured by demographics.

To benchmark police activity, one must start, at a bare minimum, with the rate of lawbreaking among various groups, for it is ultimately criminal behavior and its consequences that drive police actions. Any disparities in crime rates will have compounding effects throughout the law enforcement system.

For example, last year a man with a gold tooth was robbing and viciously beating up pedestrians in Mid-City. Victims identified him as either a dark-skinned Latino or a light-skinned African American. Accordingly, if an officer made a traffic stop in the area and noticed that the driver had a gold tooth and was black or Latino, the driver probably would have been asked to step out of his car, frisked and possibly even taken to the station house for a line-up. Some 15 men were stopped before a bike officer caught the actual criminal jaywalking.

Those 15 brief detentions went into the LAPD database, but the racial disparities they suggest are misleading. If criminal activity is not evenly distributed across the population, investigatory stops and searches will fall heaviest on individuals who are members of groups who commit most of the crime.

In Los Angeles, crime rates are in fact lopsided. In 2001, blacks committed 41% of all robberies, according to victims' descriptions given to the LAPD, though they constitute only 11% of the city's population. Robbery victims named whites, who make up 30% of the population, 4% of the time, while Latinos, 46% of the population, were identified as the assailant in 45% of such crimes. The figures for aggravated assault and rape are similarly skewed. Only if the police searching for the gold-toothed robber had arbitrarily stopped some whites could they have avoided contributing to racially disproportionate data.

Multiply this problem tens of thousands of times, and you will understand why police data look as they do. Furthermore, if criminals are disproportionately black and Latino, so will be parolees and probationers. Police can search parolees and probationers after stopping them to make sure that they are complying with the terms of their release and not carrying contraband. Without doubt, a portion of the searches in the LAPD data represents multiple encounters with this particular population, though the data are too crude to identify how large it is.

And where is criminal activity taking place? Nearly half of all homicides in 2001 occurred in South-Central, and slightly more than half of them were gang-related, according to the Police Department. It stands to reason that homicide investigators will spend a disproportionate amount of time there, where African Americans and Latinos predominate. It is not racism that sends them there; it is the incidence of crime. Would cop bashers prefer that officers investigating a murder on Western Avenue go to Brentwood for the sake of racial balance?

Once in South-Central, the police will probably look for homicide suspects among gang members. If a cop spots a driver flashing gang signs after running a red light, the man will probably be asked to step out of his car when stopped and, if exhibiting suspicious behavior, frisked. Police investigating a murder spree by the Aryan Brotherhood in the Foothill Division would do the same if they spotted a white driver behaving similarly.

Rates of lawbreaking are just the start of what's needed to analyze police activity. Many other details -- including patterns of police deployment, relative number of young people in various populations, locations of high-profile crimes and prevalence of illegal immigrants lacking driver's licenses -- are also important.

The reemergence of racial-profiling charges following the release of the LAPD data could not have come at a worse moment for the city. The many law-abiding residents in crime-plagued neighborhoods are crying out for protection from the escalating violence. Go to any police-community meeting in a crime-ridden area and the most frequent complaint you will hear is "Why aren't there more cops getting dealers and gangbangers off the streets?" rather than "Why are you profiling us?"

Sure, some L.A. officers antagonize civilians with their unnecessarily aggressive attitudes, and the department must teach them communications skills and courtesy. But that is a far different problem than endemic officer racism.

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What Looks Like Profiling Might Just Be Good Policing | Manhattan Institute

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Los Angeles' perennial critics of the cops are going to have to decide: Do they want policing that mirrors the demographics of the city or goes after criminals? They cannot have it both ways. Recently released data compiled by the Los Angeles Police Department as part of a federal consent...

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This site shows that there are multiple sides to the belief of racial profiling. The reasons why it is unnecessary for society and beneficial for society.

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Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton provided her criminal justice proposals Friday afternoon, including calling for the elimination of racial profiling.

Federal agencies, such as the FBI, are already prohibited from targeting suspects based on race - with an exception for airports and border crossings.

Clinton would extend this ban to cover state and local police forces. And given that racial profiling is quite unpopular among Americans, it could seem like a winning issue, politically.

But there is a counter-argument, which has been articulated by former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg in defense of the city's "stop and frisk" program, namely that sometimes racial profiling can be a necessary part of effective law enforcement.

What's the argument against racial profiling?

When police start targeting people based on their race, it effectively puts a whole community under suspicion. What is more, it virtually guarantees that the innocent will regularly find themselves stopped by police, for little reason beyond the color of their skin.

Racial profiling can also poison relations between police and the populace. When minority groups feel that they're under constant suspicion, they're less likely to entrust police with information that can be vital to solving crimes. This is one reason some law enforcement groups oppose racial profiling.

Why do some police forces still profile?

The principal job of any police force is to keep communities safe. If police genuinely believe that the greatest threats come from one particular racial or ethnic group, they might heighten their scrutiny of that group.

New York's now-curtailed "stop and frisk" program provides a good example. At its height, the program allowed police to question, and potentially search, any pedestrians they deemed suspicious.

Overwhelmingly, though, it seems to have targeted African-Americans. In 2012, more than half of those stopped were African-American, even though that group makes up just a quarter of the city's population.

When pressed on this point, however, former Mayor Michael Bloomberg insisted that there's a good reason: Black residents are also disproportionately involved in crime.

By this logic, asking officers to stop more white and Hispanic citizens, just to match the city's overall population, would be a willful waste of resources. Police should pay more attention to minority groups if those groups are more commonly involved in criminal activities.

What do the American people think?

A large majority of Americans are opposed to racial profiling, according to poll numbers. A Reason magazine survey from last year, asking people how they felt about stopping drivers and pedestrians based on their racial or ethnic background, found that 70 percent disapproved.

An older Gallup poll suggests that opposition is slimmer when you ask about profiling in airports, but even then a majority of Americans stand opposed.

Are there laws against racial profiling?

At the federal level, the rules are quite strict. Agencies such as the FBI and Immigration enforcement can't target people based on their race, religion, national origin, or gender - except at airports and near border crossings.

Elsewhere, though, the laws are more patchwork.

For years, a comprehensive "End Racial Profiling Act" has been floating through Congress, one which would ban the practice across the country. But for now, racial profiling is still permitted in some places.

According to the NAACP, there are 20 states that do not explicitly ban racial profiling, and many others where the ban is incomplete or inadequate.

Massachusetts, for its part, has some provisions to track police interactions and watch for evidence of profiling, though there have been efforts to strengthen those initiatives.

Will Clinton's plan become law?

There's a big difference between a campaign pledge and an actual ban on racial profiling. Before she can turn her rhetoric into reality, Hillary Clinton still has to win the nomination, then the presidency, and then convince Congress to pass a bill (this isn't the kind of thing that would be easy to do via executive order).

But campaigns often run on a very different kind of logic. It's not just that becoming president would help Hillary Clinton enact her criminal justice plans. It's that announcing those plans may win her new support among voters and help her win the presidency.

Evan Horowitz digs through data to find information that illuminates the policy issues facing Massachusetts and the U.S. He can be reached at evan.horowitz@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @GlobeHorowitz.

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What are the arguments for and against racial profiling? - The Boston Globe

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Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton provided her criminal justice proposals Friday afternoon, including calling for the elimination of racial profiling. Federal agencies, such as the FBI, are already prohibited from targeting suspects based on race - with an exception for airports and border crossings. Clinton would extend this ban to cover state and local police forces.

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This article shows how racial profiling affects African American's in so many ways, even in their health.

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African Americans face pervasive and persistent discrimination in their daily lives that directly affects their health and well-being, a report from National Public Radio, the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation finds.

The first in a series of reports based on a nationally representative survey of nearly thirty-five hundred people across the United States, the report, Discrimination in America: Experiences and Views of African Americans (56 pages, PDF), found that roughly half of African-American respondents reported experiencing institutional racial discrimination when renting or buying a home (45 percent), applying for a job (56 percent), or being considered for a promotion (57 percent). And 60 percent said they or their family members had been stopped or unfairly treated by police because of their race, while 45 percent reported receiving unfair treatment in the court system. Examples of individual discrimination included respondents being subjected to racial slurs (51 percent) or insensitive or offensive comments about their race (52 percent), as well as racial violence (42 percent).

The survey also found that 32 percent of African-American respondents had encountered racial discrimination when going to the doctor or a health clinic - and that 22 percent said they had avoided seeking medical care due to concerns about discrimination. In addition, 31 percent said they had avoided calling the police, even when in need, while 27 percent had avoided driving, using public transportation, seeking medical care, or participating in political or social events to avoid interaction with the police or government authorities.

The series of reports focuses on the discrimination experienced by eight different groups - African Americans, Latinos, Asian Americans, Native Americans, white Americans, and LGBTQ adults, men, and women.

"If someone is avoiding seeking medical care out of fear of discrimination, they're at risk of going undiagnosed for serious conditions - or forgoing management of chronic diseases like diabetes and high blood pressure," said RWJF president and CEO Richard Besser. "But even beyond that, we know that repeated stress from discrimination and racism can actually make some of those conditions more likely in the first place and shorten lives. So, these responses provide an important lens into how discrimination actually impacts people, in the short and long term."

(Photo credit: Robert Wood Johnson Foundation)

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African Americans' Health Affected by Pervasive Discrimination

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African Americans face pervasive and persistent discrimination in their daily lives that directly affects their health and well-being, a report from National Public Radio, the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation finds.

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This website gives some first hand accounts of racial profiling and some reasons why people thought they should call the police on people of color

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This is why everyday racial profiling is so dangerous | CNN

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Racial profiling happens in ways many people don't realize. And it doesn't just hurt the victims - it harms the rest of society, too.

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This website gives some statistics and facts on racial profiling

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By analyzing data from 4.5 million traffic stops in 100 North Carolina cities, Stanford researchers have found that police in that state are more likely to search black and Hispanic motorists, using a lower threshold of suspicion, than when they stop white or Asian drivers.

The empirical study found that while blacks and Hispanics are more likely to be searched, those more numerous searches are less likely to uncover illegal drugs or weapons than searches of vehicles with white or Asian drivers.

Studies based on the incidence of searches by race, and the outcomes of those searches, have been done in the past, forming the basis for concerns about racial profiling by police.

But the Stanford team - graduate students Camelia Simoiu and Sam Corbett-Davies, and assistant professor of management science and engineering Sharad Goel - developed a third, entirely new measurement called a threshold test.

The researchers show that this new measure offers a statistically rigorous way to quantify how suspicious officers were to initiate a search. For example, did officers conduct searches when there was a 15 percent probability of finding weapons or drugs, or was a 5 percent inkling enough? They correlated these threshold assessments to the race or ethnicity of the subjects across the entire dataset of 4.5 million motor vehicle stops.

"Our threshold test suggests that officers apply a double standard when deciding whom to search, with black and Hispanic drivers searched on the basis of less evidence than whites and Asians," said Simoiu, adding, "We consistently observe this pattern of behavior across the largest 100 police departments in the state."

The study marks a new milestone in Stanford's Project on Law, Order and Algorithms, which has already collected data on 50 million traffic stops in 11 states and is aiming to expand the database to 100 million stops from at least 30 states and every region of the Unites States. The purpose of the database, which the researchers plan to make publicly available, is to shed light on the prevalence of racial profiling and to identify techniques for improving police practices.

In the case of North Carolina, the researchers obtained records for traffic stops in the state from 2009 through 2014. The records included information about the ethnicity, age and gender of the people being pulled over and at least some information on the rationale of police officers for searching particular people and vehicles.

Racial differences

Until now, analysts have used two fairly simple statistical tests to look for patterns of racial profiling.

The first test, known as benchmarking, involves comparing search rates for people of different ethnicities. If blacks account for 10 percent of the local population but 30 percent of searches, that higher incidence would be evidence of discrimination. A second test examines the "hit" rate or outcome - the percentage of searches that actually lead to the discovery of weapons, drugs or other illegal contraband.

In North Carolina, both statistical tests provided strong evidence of unfounded racial discrimination. Police searched 5.4 percent of blacks and 4.1 percent of the Hispanics they pulled over, but only 3.1 percent of whites. In many cities and towns, however, searches of blacks and Hispanics were actually less likely to uncover contraband than searches of whites.

But even when both tests converge, this analysis has limitations. If a higher percentage of people in one ethnic group actually do carry illegal drugs or weapons, for example, a higher search rate for that group may not reflect racial discrimination.

So the Stanford researchers went further than prior studies to get a more accurate view of the presence or absence of unfounded discrimination.

They did this by developing a complex statistical tool they call a threshold test. It analyzed four variables for each of the 4.5 million stops:

Race of the driver

Department of the officer making the stop

Whether the stop resulted in a search - and, if a search occurred,

Whether it turned up drugs, guns or other contraband

These four variables provided a statistical snapshot of an officer's threshold of suspicion before searching a person of a given race. As the authors wrote: "In nearly every one of the 100 departments we consider, we find that black and Hispanic drivers are subjected to a lower search threshold than whites, suggestive of widespread discrimination against these groups."

Specifically, the study found that police decided to search black drivers based on a 7 percent certainty that they might be hiding something illegal. If an African American driver looks nervous, for example, police might interpret the nervousness as a sign of possible guilt and insist on a search.

For Hispanics, the search threshold was 6 percent certainty. But police in these 100 North Carolina cities wanted a 15 percent certainty before searching the vehicles of white drivers. The threshold for searching Asians was about the same as for whites.

Suspicions and searches

The finding has important implications, the researchers noted.

Had North Carolina's police applied the same standard of suspicion to blacks as whites, the researchers estimate that they would have searched 30 percent fewer black drivers - about 30,000 people over the six years they study. Hispanics would have experienced a 50 percent reduction in searches affecting 8,000 drivers.

But while the new test reveals that the threshold of suspicion varies by race, the authors note a caveat.

"We cannot, however, definitively conclude that the disparities we see stem from racial bias," they wrote. "For example, officers might instead be applying lower search thresholds to those from lower socio-economic backgrounds, a demographic that is disproportionately black and Hispanic."

The Stanford researchers are collecting traffic stop data from other states to see what patterns are revealed by their analyses. They are also considering ways to apply their new statistical methods to other settings where race or ethnicity may be a factor, such as mortgage lending and hiring.

"We hope our results spur further investigation into allegations of police discrimination, and help improve public policy," Goel said.

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Stanford researchers develop new statistical test that shows racial profiling in police traffic stops | Stanford News

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By analyzing data from 4.5 million traffic stops in 100 North Carolina cities, Stanford researchers have found that police in that state are more likely to search black and Hispanic motorists, using a lower threshold of suspicion, than when they stop white or Asian drivers.