ICYMI: Top Reasons Simsbury Police Stop Drivers

Editor’s note: This article originally was published earlier in the week. We’re republishing it here in case you missed it:

Speeding is the reason Simsbury police officers give for almost 43 percent of their traffic stops — a higher percentage than all but nine of the other police departments and state police troops in Connecticut.

That’s one of the many statistics in a recent report from the state Racial Profiling Prohibition Project of the Institute for Municipal and Regional Policy at Central Connecticut State University about traffic stops by police around the state.

The Connecticut “Traffic Stop and Data Analysis” report looked at statistics for the 12-month period ending on Sept. 30, 2014 for 92 municipal police departments, 13 state police troops and various other police agencies with arrest powers — including state capitol police and some college campus police departments.

“Speed related” was the description of 42.7 percent of traffic stops by Simsbury police. Other police departments with higher percentages were New Milford (63 percent — the highest percentage), Suffield, Portland, Southington, Newtown, Ridgefield, Guilford, Weston and Wolcott. Police departments having the lowest percentages of stops ”speed related” were West Hartford (5.1 percent), Bridgeport (5 percent) and New London (3.4 percent).

Altogether, Simsbury police officers made 3,281 traffic stops in the 12-month period. Other reasons for stops (in descending order): defective lights (10.8 percent), moving violation (8.7 percent), improper use of cell phone (8 percent), traffic signal (7.7 percent), stop sign (6.3 percent), display of plates (2.7 percent), registration (2.6 percent), traffic control signal (1.8 percent), seatbelt (1.5 percent), suspended license (0.4 percent), window tint (0.2 percent). A total of 8.1 percent were for other reasons.

Statistics from Simsbury also showed:

• Police from only 20 police departments were less likely to stop a driver for a registration violation than Simsbury.
• Simsbury traffic stops resulted in warnings the vast majority of the time — almost 80 percent (79.09 percent, to be exact). Most of those warnings were verbal (47.39 percent of the total traffic stops) rather than written (31.7 percent).
• Only 15 other departments had a higher percentage of warnings (and various state police troops were the least likely to let off a driver with a warning). (Danbury police issued warnings only 13.44 percent of the time, one of the lowest figures in the state.)
• Only 25 Simsbury traffic stops out of 3,281 resulted in searches — that’s 0.76 percent of the total. Only 13 police agencies in the state had a smaller percentage. More urban police departments were more likely to conduct a search — almost 29 percent of all stops in Waterbury resulted in searches (the highest percentage in the state). The next highest percentage was in Bridgeport (just over 11 percent).

Racial disparities in traffic stops

Part of the reason for the report was to see if black and Hispanic drivers were stopped more frequently than other drivers. The report found that drivers from both groups were more likely than white drivers to be stopped during daylight hours than in darkness. People from minority groups were more likely to be searched after traffic stops not just in comparison with white drivers, but in comparison with the rate at which police found contraband (such as a drug packet or a gun without a permit).

The study said that while it reported on statewide figures, “specific officers and departments are driving these statewide trends. [...] The departments that were identified as having a statistically significant disparity are presumed to be driving the statewide results. Although it is possible that specific officers within departments that were not identified may be engaged in racial profiling, these behaviors were not substantial enough to influence the department level results. It is also possible that a small number of individual officers within the identified departments are driving the department level results.”

The report identified five local police departments in the state that “exhibit a statistically significant racial or ethnic disparity that may indicate the presence of racial and ethnic violence.” Those departments are in the Town of Groton, Granby, Waterbury, State Police Troop C, State Police Troop H.

Twelve other departments had some statistical anomalies that seemed to justify further observation, the report said. Those departments are in Wethersfield, Hamden, Manchester, New Britain, Stratford, Waterbury and East Hartford, and to a lesser extent in Meriden, New Haven, Newington, Norwich and Windsor.

Simsbury is not one of those departments — according to the report, the traffic stops made by Simsbury police were a smaller percentage of minority drivers than there are in a 30-mile radius of the town. (The report pointed out that the area minority population is only a vague indicator of how many drivers from minority groups are on a community’s roads.)

A total of 7.72 percent of all stops in Simsbury involved black drivers. The report compared that percentage to the percent of black residents age 16 and over within 30 miles of the community where the stop took place. For Simsbury, according to the report, a total of 11.54 percent of the population within a 30 mile radius is black. The difference between those two figures is 3.82 percent of all traffic stops.

A total of 1.46 percent of town residents aged 16 or over (of driving age, that is) are black. They accounted for 5.43 percent of all police stops. The state average is 0.42. Hispanics account for 2.61 percent of the town population but only 2.5 percent of the stops.

A total of 3.12 percent of all stops in Simsbury involved Hispanic drivers, and the driving-age population for Hispanics within a 30-mile radius of Simsbury is 4.53 percent. The difference between those two figures is 1.14 percent of all traffic stops.