Public News Service:

Black teenagers ages 15 to 17 are six times more likely to be searched by the police than their white counterparts, according to a report from the California Racial and Identity Profiling Advisory Board released this week.

The board crunched the numbers from more than 3 million traffic and pedestrian stops done in 2021 by 58 police agencies.

Melanie Ochoa, outgoing vice chair of the board and the director of police practices for the ACLU of Southern California said about 94% of police stops were self-initiated, not in response to a call for service. And 87% of those are traffic stops.

"It's a low-hanging fruit," Ochoa contended. "It's easy to find someone potentially committing a traffic violation when it's intended to do more basic searches without evidence of other criminal activity being present at the time."

The data showed Black people were stopped at more than twice their percentage in the population, Latinx people at 7% more, whereas white people were arrested at 4% less than their population level. In addition, the report recommended police agencies cease making "pretextual" stops where there is no reasonable suspicion or probable cause of criminal activity.

Ochoa added research shows contact with law enforcement can be traumatic.

"Interacting with officers correlates with higher distress, anxiety, trauma, depression, increased risk of suicidal ideation, paranoia, post-traumatic stress, and trauma-induced sleep deprivation, particularly for youth," Ochoa explained.

The Los Angeles Police Department revised its policies last year to reduce the number of pretextual stops. The report also recommended police agencies ban so-called consent searches and limit searches to cases with probable cause.

By Suzanne Potter

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