Comparing San Diego Law Enforcement to Ferguson

San Diegans took to the streets and freeways last week following the decision of a Missouri grand jury not to charge white Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson, who fatally shot black teenager Michael Brown in August.

Local protests were held in solidarity with Ferguson, but organizers said they also wanted to draw attention to biased policing at home.

Indeed, the gap between the number of whites arrested and the number of blacks arrested by San Diego police officers is actually much wider than in Ferguson. The local numbers follow national trends; the majority of jurisdictions that keep racial data have larger disparities than Ferguson.

Using FBI records, USA Today compiled arrest rates for every city that documents them by race. San Diego police arrested non-blacks at a rate of 55 per 1,000 residents in 2012. The rate for black residents was more than four times higher at 225 per 1,000.

In Ferguson, the gap between groups was smaller. At a rate of 186 per 1,000, blacks were arrested three times more than non-blacks, which were arrested at a rate of 66 per 1,000.

But there are a lot of flaws in these data sets. It's possible that black people actually do commit more crimes because of historic disenfranchisement. Poor access to education and jobs can lead to criminal behavior or put people in neighborhoods where there's a stronger police presence.

So a lot of departments are tracking traffic stops. Police officers have a lot more discretion in deciding whether to stop someone for a moving violation than they would for an assault or property crime.

San Diego police officers stopped black motorists at a rate double their share of the driving population during the first quarter of 2014. They make up 6 percent of San Diegans 16 and older but accounted for 12 percent of the stops. The stop rate for white drivers — 42 percent — was slightly less than their share of the population of 48 percent.

In Ferguson in 2013, the disparity for black motorists was smaller than in San Diego — about a third higher than their percentage of the population. Blacks account for 63 percent of the driving population but experienced 86 percent of stops.

The discrepancy for white drivers in Ferguson was significant. Their stop rate was 13 percentage points lower than their 34 percent share of the population.

Ferguson has few Hispanic residents so there's not much of a comparison to be made there. But San Diego Hispanics also saw a disproportionate share of traffic stops.

Though better than arrest rates, the San Diego Police Chief Shelley Zimmerman and independent researchers say stop data alone aren’t enough to make the case racial profiling is occurring in San Diego.

A spokesman said the department will release new stop data in early 2015.