Report: San Diego Police Department Enforcement Practices Reveals Distinct Racial Disparities

Speaker 1: 00:00 The number of times San Diego police stop search and arrest. People of color is higher than for white people. That's the finding of a new report released yesterday by a Yale university based research organization. Joining us with details is Jesse Marks or reporter for voices, San Diego, and welcome Jesse. Thanks Claire. Happy to be here to start. You've been trying to get this report for a while now. So tell us why it was only released. Now, Speaker 2: 00:29 The explanation that the city has given officially is that they needed a few months to review it, to make sure that there weren't any mistakes in it. So we know that that process was completed sometime around April, but we tried to get a copy of it in March. And then we're told in may that we couldn't, because it was still technically a draft and that its release would chill internal deliberations within the city. So essentially, uh, San Diego argued that there wasn't a public interest in disclosing this report, but what the city did was call a press conference about 30 minutes in advance and at the press conference itself, they gave the reporters a link to the report. So essentially going into that press conference, you couldn't ask for any specific details about it, but then after the fact reporters could go back and read it and then come up with questions. But by then the city officials had already given a press conference, they'd made their statements. They'd already talked about it. Okay, Speaker 1: 01:21 Well that sounds like quite a journey. Uh, now that the report is actually public, can you summarize, um, a few of the findings and tell us whether you were surprised by them? Speaker 2: 01:33 So the big level picture takeaway from the report is that people of color experience, uh, stops as well as force more often than their white counterparts, as you had noticed before, but specifically black San Diego has experienced non traffic stops 4.2 times more often than white people. They're also subjected to force 4.8 times as often as white people, uh, during non traffic stops, Asian, Latino people were searched 1.4 times that of white people. I think what's interesting in this case though, is that for years, the city of San Diego and specifically its police department has made an argument that past studies were either politically motivated or they were unfair and they didn't take into consideration. Certainly certain external factors say for instance, crime rates, poverty rates. And so this report, which was supposed to be the authoritative take on these issues, the one that was going to set aside all the past ones basically came to the same conclusion. So no, I'm not surprised. Speaker 1: 02:32 And this report was done by an outside nonprofit that also works with other police departments, including in Berkeley, California. Can you tell us more about their philosophy? Speaker 2: 02:43 So the name of the group is the center for policing equity. It got founded out of UCLA. It's now housed over at Yale university and it was founded by a academic he's a social scientist and he's also a social justice activist. But what's interesting about his is that he, he believes it's impossible, not impossible, but it's difficult to infer intent within data. He's capable of analyzing data and showing you where the disparities are, but he believes that it is so complex that you can't boil it down just to being racial bias. So the report that was released yesterday says quite clearly that racial bias may be a motivating factor, that the behavior of an individual officer may have contributed to those disparities, but it also lays out a number of other possible reasons, including the behavior or the actions of someone from the community who was stopped, uh, as well as potentially the department culture, as well as the policies. Speaker 2: 03:41 And so it tries to take a bigger picture of, of what's going on and what contributed to disparities, but the organization itself, as well as the police officials have stated consistently over the last few years that they don't actually believe disparities equate to racial bias. And so the founder of the center for policing equity has actually written this in studies over the years, he has stated that his motivations are to take the temperature down in the room. And he thinks because you can't actually infer that there's racial bias buried within the data itself, that is going to allow, uh, the police department community members to come together and to talk about changing larger patterns of behaviors rather than changing these specific attitudes of a police officer. Because again, they don't believe you can get inside the mind of a police officer just by looking at data. Speaker 1: 04:33 It seems like their findings here in San Diego present an opportunity for the police chief David [inaudible] and mayor Todd, Gloria, to take a strong stand and say that change needs to be made. Have they done that? Speaker 2: 04:48 Well, they have made a, a series of reforms over the last year. I would argue that they've been fairly modest going forward. They've also laid out a series of proposals, uh, additional reforms on top of those over the last year. And so for instance, uh, the city is now talking about creating a new procedure for its interactions, with transgender and gender non-binary individuals. It's also talking about, um, revising its policy around consent. So when someone is actually searched, they have the right to refuse rather than feel like they can't. I think those are all good steps, but again, what's interesting here is that the city, you know, for a long time has been saying, there's no problem. There's no racial bias inherent in this data, but we're going to, we're going to do this and we're going to try to make things better. And so we're going to bring the community into the fold. We're going to go hold, hold community meetings. We're going to hold listening sessions. All of that. I think that's a good step. Whether or not they've been, uh, digging their heels in for the last couple of years, Speaker 1: 05:44 We invited police, chief David and his light to be on the program today, but we're told he's not available. So instead I wanted to play a clip from an interview. He gave at the press conference yesterday when the report was released, disparities Speaker 3: 05:58 Are going to exist because everything is society doesn't happen to grow along the demographic line. And until that happens, you're going to have disparities. And that's why it's important to understand that disparity does not equal discrimination. Speaker 1: 06:13 What do you think he's saying there? Speaker 2: 06:16 Well, I think what he's saying, there is not necessarily wrong, which is that, uh, interactions with police departments are complex and there's a lot of different factors taking place. What he seems to be gesturing towards is that there are larger external factors at play that the police department can't control for. And so he wants to have it both ways to a degree. It's a little bit of blame shifting. Um, but time and time again, we keep seeing these studies come out, showing these disparities. He's just unwilling to take it to the next step and say, okay, well maybe racial bias, maybe discrimination is an underlying cause of these larger patterns that there is systemically something related to, uh, something buried deep within this data itself, but they're not willing to go that extra step. Speaker 1: 06:59 And that's what I was going to ask you is what happens next? Were there any concrete changes announced with the report? Speaker 2: 07:06 No. What they basically offered up were a series of possible changes down the road, which would align with what mayor Todd Gloria had set a couple of months ago that he wants to rethink and reevaluate how the police department interacts with the public. Speaker 1: 07:21 All right. Well, I've been speaking with Jesse Marks of voices, San Diego. Thank you, Jesse. Thanks Claire.