More than four months after the release of an extensive report that showed significant racial disparities in the traffic stops and vehicle searches carried out by Nashville police officers, Metro Police Chief Steve Anderson sent a letter to the Metro Council this week slamming the report, questioning its methodology and calling its conclusions "morally disingenuous."
Now the group behind the report, Gideon's Army, has responded.
In a lengthy release, they push back on Anderson's assertions and add context where they say his arguments were insufficient.
You can read their response in its entirety on their website, but here are some excerpts:
Chief Anderson cites several sources to show that racial profiling should be defined as an individual officer’s decision to stop a driver based solely on a group characteristic. He quotes the first sentence of the American Civil Liberties Union’s webpage on racial profiling but omits their critique of his definition a few paragraphs later. They state:"Defining racial profiling as relying “solely” on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin or religion can be problematic. This definition found in some state racial profiling laws is unacceptable, because it fails to include when police act on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin or religion in combination with an alleged violation of all law. Under the “solely” definition, an officer who targeted Latino drivers who were speeding would not be racial profiling because the drivers were not stopped “solely” because of their race but also because they were speeding. This would eliminate the vast majority of racial profiling now occurring (American Civil Liberties Union 2017)."
Similarly, the Department of Justice does not establish that individual officers acted solely based on race when concluding that discriminatory racial impact and constitutional violations occurred in Baltimore and Ferguson. Using Census data, they argue that,
"While there are limitations on using population data to benchmark vehicle stops because the proportion of drivers on roadways does not necessarily match the population living in a particular area, there are strong indications that BPD’s high rate of stopping African-American drivers is discriminatory (U.S. Department of Justice 2016:52)."
Drawing methodologically from the DOJ’s Ferguson and Baltimore reports, we argue that the data show a consistent racially disparate impact across the county on multiple indicators. Chief Anderson’s letter to Metro Council overlooks discriminatory impact from probable cause and consent searches as well as the fact that officers are less likely to find evidence of a crime on black drivers. Our 22 interviews with black Nashville residents make clear that it is these discriminatory practices that are undermining police-community relations, not our report aimed at transforming policing and strengthening communities. The voices of community members were not mentioned in his letter.
They also address Anderson's argument that Gideon's Army wrongly uses census data for their report:
In terms of methodology, Chief Anderson makes an important point: unadjusted Census benchmarks do not tell the full story of officers’ decision-making, but they can be strengthened through several adjustments, which we address in our report. First, to clarify several inaccuracies in Chief Anderson’s statement, prisoners are not included in the American Community Survey (ACS) since it only measures the non-institutionalized population and college students living in dorms are included in the ACS (U.S. Census Bureau 2016). The American Community Survey is continuously collected and estimates the population of metropolitan areas with more than 65,000 people annually. As recommended by Lorie Fridell (2004), one of the experts cited by Chief Anderson, ACS data can be adjusted by using the driving age population in combination with the proportion of households with access to vehicles.
The response closes by focusing in on Anderson's denial that racial profiling exists at all in Metro policing strategies.
"Gideon’s Army works to dismantle institutional injustices that are deeply ingrained in the criminal justice system. Chief Anderson just told us that he does not see discrimination as an institutional problem but a problem of single individuals acting on bias. This outdated and inaccurate understanding of racial discrimination undermines his credibility on issues of race and policing. Nashville deserves more."
