RIPA Data

The California Racial and Identity Profiling Act (RIPA) Board has issued its 2022 Report analyzing police stop activity in 2020, and it’s pretty good.

RIPA requires that all police departments in California begin collecting a consistent set of data on every stop that police officers make. The largest departments have already started, and all departments will be collecting the same data in 2023. This data then gets reported to the state, and eventually becomes public.

The Los Altos Police Department (LAPD) has admirably gotten the jump on this timeline, and is already collecting data. LAPD is making some of that data available to the public directly, and we’ve been analyzing the initial data release. We hope that public data releases will become the standard in our town.

RIPA's established Board will analyze the data statewide, and will make recommendations for areas needing improvement. The good news is that this report is very well done. It uses rigorous analysis methods and draws conclusions carefully from the data, meaning that recommendations from the Board will be data-driven.

While it is still early, and statewide results aren’t possible, a few (unsurprising) conclusions are already statistically significant. Black and Hispanic people are stopped by police more often, searched more often, and subjected to violence more often than white and Asian people. When searched, they are less likely to be found with contraband – suggesting that they are being searched with less justification, which is consistent with previously published research. This isn’t news, even if it’s a core area we need to improve.

The 2022 report also brings new focus on disparities of treatment for LGBTQIA people and for people with disabilities. These groups, too, experience higher than average rates of police interaction. Gathering this data is a critical first step, and now we must use the data to demand reforms to protect these groups.