Racial profiling in police traffic stops is a well-documented phenomenon that has been confirmed over the years by steadily improving data collection. Such data is an absolute necessity if reform is ever going to happen. Yet Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey last year summarily scuttled a key data metric on the issue that had been used by his predecessors for almost a quarter-century.
We suggested at the time that the move was a not-very-subtle racial dog whistle from Bailey to his right-wing political base, something he’d certainly done before. Whatever political juice it may have given Bailey in last November’s election, it was a bad policy — and now it’s about to become an expensive one. The NAACP has filed suit alleging Bailey’s decision violates state law requiring the data collection while also violating the state Sunshine Law.
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Here is an earnest suggestion to Missouri’s top legal official: How about voluntarily resuming the previous data metric right now? It could end litigation that, whatever the outcome, will cost Missouri taxpayers significantly in legal expenses. And it also happens to be the right thing to do.
Data through the years have shown that Black drivers get pulled over at a higher rate than white drivers and have their vehicles searched at a higher rate. The same data show those searches tend to turn up higher rates of contraband among the white drivers.
The issue spurred passage of a requiring the attorney general to collect and analyze traffic-stop data from local law enforcement every year and publicly release it as an annual report. The law specifies that the analysis must include comparison of the percentages of stopped motorists versus their percentages in the overall population.
Attorneys general of both parties have for years met that standard by including in their annual reports what’s called a “Disparity Index.†It presents the data as a ratio based on the race of the stopped drivers analyzed against the racial demographics of the local jurisdictions where they were stopped. Obviously, you would expect higher ratios of Black drivers to be pulled over in a primarily Black jurisdiction than in a primarily white one; the Disparity Index simply takes that factor into account.
In last year’s “Vehicle Stops Report,†Bailey’s office left out the Disparity Index data for the first time since 2020. The official explanation was that the Index is redundant with other data already provided in the report, and that the ratio it arrives at can lead to misinterpretation of that data.
In fact, the whole point of the Disparity Index is to give context to data that might otherwise lack it. Last year’s report, for example, showed that of the almost 1.4 million stops made by police agencies in Missouri in 2023, 77% of the drivers were white and 17.3% were Black. What does that mean?
The Missouri Independent, using the now-scuttled method of the Disparity Index, calculates that it means white drivers had an index of 0.97 while Black drivers had an index of 1.59. Thus the context.
Speaking of context, it’s important to note another one: Bailey made the decision to stop using the Disparity Index — thus warding off what had become an annual spectacle of embarrassing headlines about Missouri’s racially tinged traffic enforcement — during his campaign for a full term to his current office.
During that same campaign, Bailey improperly inserted his office into several racially charged controversies, including officially taking the side of a white Kansas City cop convicted of manslaughter in the death of a Black man, and taking the sides of three right-wing state legislators who allegedly slandered a Black bystander to the mass shooting at the Kansas City Chiefs Super Bowl celebration last year.
The point being, it’s perfectly fair to wonder about Bailey’s political motives in mothballing the Disparity Index.
The alleges Bailey’s decision to stop using the Disparity Index is a violation of the state’s data-collection statute. It also claims Bailey’s office has violated the state Sunshine Law by withholding documents that would shed light on how that decision was made.
It’s unclear how strong a legal case the NAACP has in its suit, but that’s almost beside the point. This was a bad and arguably politically motivated decision by Bailey that is now coming back to bite Missouri financially. Do the prudent and right thing, Mr. Bailey: Agree to resume using the Disparity Index and avoid this unnecessary legal fight.
