dataset of traffic stops by police officers* that was collected by the Stanford Open Policing Project. They've collected data from 31 US states. Currently, a comprehensive, national repository detailing interactions between police and the public doesn’t exist. That’s why the Stanford Open Policing Project is collecting and standardizing data on vehicle and pedestrian stops from law enforcement departments across the country and we’re making that information freely available. The Stanford Open Policing Project, are an interdisciplinary team of researchers and journalists at Stanford University. They are committed to combining the academic rigor of statistical analysis with the explanatory power of data journalism. They’ve already gathered over 200 million records from dozens of state and local police departments across the country. but we'll be focusing on data from the state of Rhode Island. For size reasons, some of the columns and rows have been removed, but you can download the full dataset for any of the 31 states from the project's website
50,000 americans are pulled over by police everyday. There’re many different interactions with police that have ended tragically, such as the arrest of Sandra bland in Texas in 2015 that ended up with her dying in jail, and the Minnesota stop with falando Castillo where he was shot and killed, those were really egregious incidents.
I tried to analyze the dataset and find battery, draw larger conclusions about the police officers activities we found that black and Hispanic drivers are ticketed searched and arrested at higher rates than white drivers even after controlling for location age gender in here the pattern is widespread occurring throughout the country
The black drivers were more likely to be charged with the drug related offenses prior to legalization the policy changed mitigated racial disparity. what's interesting is that the number of searches also dramatically decline in both states in part this is because legalizing recreational marijuana removed a common reason for conducting searches.
these differences highlighted asperity in police practices in and of themselves the statistics do indicate racial discrimination.
for example that officers searched white drivers of there's a 10% chance or greater that they can contraband but there's black drivers there's a 5% chance or greater this is going to be emitted at discrimination
We have tried to answer some questions, such as...
Do the genders or race commit different violations?
Does gender or race affect who gets a ticket for speeding?
Does gender or race affect whose vehicle is searched?
Calculating the search rate and Comparing search rates by gender.
Comparing speeding outcomes by gender and race.
Does gender and race affect who is frisked during a search?
Does gender and raceaffect who is frisked during a search?
Examining the search types.
Calculating the inventory rate
Counting protective frisks.
During a vehicle search,
the police officer may pat down the driver to check if they have a weapon. This is known as a "protective frisk.
Comparing frisk rates by gender.
Does time of day affect arrest rate?
Calculating the hourly arrest rate.
Are drug-related stops on the rise?
Comparing drug and search rates.
What violations are caught in each district?
Tallying violations by district
How long might you be stopped for a violation?