Vermont State Police address racial disparity in traffic stops

[TexasTowelie]

It’s a story that has been told anecdotally for decades, civil rights and criminal defense lawyer Robert Appel said: Black and Hispanic drivers are stopped, searched and arrested at a much higher rate than white drivers. Now, Vermont state data can confirm as much.

The Vermont State Police’s Fair and Impartial Policing Committee met last week to hear a study, presented by University of Vermont Professor Stephanie Seguino, that assessed racial disparities in Vermont State Police traffic stops and outcomes from 2010 through 2015.

The results confirmed an earlier analysis by Jack McDevitt, director of Northeastern University’s Institute on Race and Justice in Boston. The two studies’ conclusions are the same: The Vermont State Police has work to do.

Seguino and her co-author, Cornell University Visiting Associate Professor Nancy Brooks, found that blacks and Hispanics are more likely to be arrested and searched by Vermont State Police than white drivers and are less likely to be found with contraband once searched — and that the rates at which this happens vary significantly across barracks and troopers.

Read more: http://www.sentinelsource.com/news/local/vermont-state-police-address-racial-disparity-in-traffic-stops/article_41e9f6da-e815-563a-af0e-6aeeec582fa3.html