Report: APD searched Hispanics during stops more than any other ethnic group last year
AUSTIN, Texas (FOX 7 Austin) - The Austin Police Department released its annual racial profiling report, as required by state law.
In 2018, the department did more than 12,000 searches from traffic stops, but a combined 68 percent of the search subjects were either Hispanic or African-American.
Chris Harris is an activist for criminal justice reform. He believes the police should re-examine some of their methods of fighting crime, to make sure they are being fair.
"You would think the stops would be fairly analogous to the population," said Harris.
Chief Manley said he only deploys his officers where there is a need. He believes the disparity is high for a reason. "We know minority populations are over-represented in less affluent communities. So again that's just for a variety of reasons so the likelihood of us having interactions is increased in those neighborhoods," said Chief Brian Manley.
Chris Harris praises APD for having a low number of consent searches.
This when the officers just ask to search someone’s car, often for little to no reason.
The Travis County Sheriff's Office also released their numbers from last year. They had a lower search incident percentage for African-Americans and Hispanics. It sits at about 57 percent for the ethnic groups combined.
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