The latest official report on police racial profiling in Connecticut finds no significant disparity in the way police treated drivers during traffic stops in 2022.
The Connecticut Racial Profiling Prohibition Project report finds that about 36% of state and local police discretionary traffic stops that involved searches in 2022 were of white motorists, 31% were Black and 34% were Hispanic.
The project was created to implement the Alvin W. Penn Racial Profiling Law, which prohibits law enforcement agencies from stopping, detaining or searching any motorist when the stop is motivated solely by considerations of the race, color, ethnicity, age, gender or sexual orientation of that individual.
Ken Barone, the co-author of the 2022 report, which is the project's ninth annual report, said that it reflects a three-year trend.
“It’s not that there were no disparities identified. But it’s that disparities in a number of areas continue to be declining. And in some of the tests we used, we did not find disparities,” he said.
“Disparities statewide continue to decrease. Both in searches and in stops. And we did not find any statistical disparities in stop outcomes either,” Barone said.
He said stop disposition analysis did not reveal any discernible pattern in terms of how non-White motorists are treated following a traffic stop. But it did indicate that drivers of color faced statistically different outcomes.
