美国国家公共电台 NPR In Oakland, More Data Hasn't Meant Less Racial Disparity During Police Stops

DAVID GREENE, HOST:

The police department in Oakland, Calif., has been under federal oversight 1 now for more than 15 years, stemming from a police abuse and racial profiling scandal. In that negotiated settlement, the city agreed to sweeping 2 reforms, including to better track all stops and to eliminate discriminatory policing. But as NPR's Eric Westervelt reports, there's mounting frustration 3 that better data collection still has not led to real change.

ERIC WESTERVELT, BYLINE 4: For the last few years, Stanford University researchers have helped the Oakland police understand the information officers collect during every police stop and arrest on the streets here in Oakland. The researchers showed that Oakland officers are far more likely to stop, search and even handcuff black people than white people during a traffic or pedestrian stop. And their analysis of bodycam footage showed that during traffic stops, officers spoke 5 less respectfully to black motorists than whites. Oakland's police chief, Anne Kirkpatrick, says these studies by Stanford psychology 6 professor Jennifer Eberhardt have proved invaluable 7.

ANNE KIRKPATRICK: A lot of agencies collect data. But we have gone and worked with Stanford to say, teach us how to ask the questions of that data. Teach us how to think. I want a change of how we think about policing. And when you think differently, you're going to have culture change.

WESTERVELT: But what the police chief and the city's mayor had hoped would become a national model for a data-driven reduction in racially biased 8 policing has become the latest flashpoint for Oakland's troubled department. Activists 9, residents and some local politicians protested the recent renewal 10 of the Stanford professor's half-million-dollar, two-year contract.

CATHY LEONARD: But I don't understand why she needs to come back and ask for more money.

WESTERVELT: Cathy Leonard is the founder 11 of Oakland Neighborhoods for Equity 12. She says the police seem in love with big data and stuck on a hamster wheel of collection and analysis, a system she says that hasn't worked to reduce racially biased police stops, a key part of the federal settlement some 15 years ago.

LEONARD: Black people are being forced out of the city of Oakland due to gentrification and other matters. And yet, the police are still stopping black men at exponential rates. The only thing that can be explained by is racism 13, pure and simple.

WESTERVELT: Oakland City Councilwoman Desley Brooks 14 also questions why the police chief needs an outside consultant 15 to interpret data and help make policy when neither the chief nor the professor have been able to move the needle on an issue they were hired to help fix.

DESLEY BROOKS: The reality is that if you are the one that is stopped when there is no reason for you to be stopped except for the color of your skin, that is unacceptable. You know that it takes away a part of your dignity. The mayor said it. The chief of police said it. Dr. Eberhardt has said it. Racial profiling is unacceptable. Then why haven't you came up with anything that addresses racial profiling?

WESTERVELT: In some recent months, the percentage of blacks who were stopped went up. Stanford professor Eberhardt declined to comment. I asked Police Chief Kirkpatrick about the latest numbers.

KIRKPATRICK: We have reduced the actual number of contacts of people by almost 50 percent.

WESTERVELT: But why can't you reduce the number of African-Americans in the stops you are making?

KIRKPATRICK: Right. So we're starting first with the footprint. We still know that it's disproportionate. And it is that disparity, that lack of equity, that is now the target.

WESTERVELT: Kirkpatrick says the department has reduced officer use of force and traffic stops for minor 16 mechanical problems, stops that turned out to be racially biased and provocative 17. And the chief, who was hired less than two years ago, cautions that data-driven change takes time.

Eric Westervelt, NPR News, Oakland, Calif.

(SOUNDBITE OF PHILANTHROPE'S "REBIRTH")