Analysis
The Texas legislature, in 2001, passed Senate Bill 1074 which became the Texas
Racial Profiling Law. That is, the law came into effect on January 1, 2002 and required
all police departments in Texas, to collect traffic-related data and report this information
to their local governing authority by March 1 st of each year. In 2009, the racial profiling
law was modified to include the collection and reporting of all motor vehicle related
contacts where a citation was issued or arrest made. In addition, the modification to the
law further requires that all police officers indicate whether or not they knew the race or
ethnicity of the individual before detaining them. Further, it is required that agencies
report motor vehicle related data to their local governing authority and to the Texas
Commission on Law Enforcement (TCOLE) by March 1st of each year. The purpose in
collecting and presenting this information is to determine if police officers in a particular
municipality are engaging in the practice of racially profiling minority motorists.
The Texas Racial Profiling Law also requires police departments to interpret
motor vehicle-related data. Even though most researchers would probably agree with the
fact that it is within the confines of good practice for police departments to be
accountable to the citizenry while carrying a transparent image before the community, it
is very difficult to determine if individual police officers are engaging in racial profiling,
from a review and analysis of aggregate/institutional data. In other words, it is
challenging for a reputable researcher to identify specific “individual” racist behavior
from aggregate-level “institutional” data on traffic or motor vehicle-related contacts.
As stated previously, in 2009, the Texas Legislature passed House Bill 3389,
which modified the existing Racial Profiling Law by adding new requirements; this took
effect on January 1st, 2010. These most recent changes include, but are not exclusive of,
the re-definition of a contact to include motor vehicles where a citation was issued or an
arrest made. In addition, it requires police officers to indicate if they knew the race or
ethnicity of the individual before detaining them. Also, the more recent law requires
adding "middle eastern" to the racial and ethnic category and submitting the annual data
report to TCOLE before March 1st of each year. I am pleased to inform you that these
additional requirements have been addressed, since 2009, by the Arlington Police
Department as it is demonstrated throughout this report.
In an effort to comply with The Texas Racial Profiling Law, the Arlington Police
Department commissioned the analysis of its 2013 motor vehicle contact data. Thus, two
different types of data analyses were performed. The first of these involved a careful
evaluation of the 2013 motor vehicle-related data. This particular analysis measured, as
required by the law, the number and percentage of Caucasians, African Americans,
Hispanics, Asians, Native Americans, Middle Easterners and individuals belonging to the
“other” category, that came in contact with the police in the course of a motor vehicle
related contact. Further, the analysis included information relevant to the number and
percentage of searches while indicating the type of search performed (i.e., consensual or
probable cause). Also, the data analysis included the number and percentage of