Amy's Robot

Numbers don't lie, unless you delete them

When you're trying to eradicate any sense of objective truth in this country, a good government office to influence is the supposedly independent Bureau of Justice Statistics, whose impartial studies about crime patterns and police actions help inform policy.

A study mandated by Congress to investigate patterns in traffic stops and racial profiling by police uncovered some unsavory but not surprising results: while white, Latino, and black drivers are all pulled over at about the same rate (about 9%), black and Latino drivers or their vehicles are searched a lot more often than white drivers are, and force is used more often against non-white drivers. A graphic showing the stats is here.

But when the press release about these findings was being prepared, the political supervisor of the office, Tracy Henke, sent the report back to the head of the Bureau with some suggested edits. "The references in the draft to higher rates of searches and use of force for blacks and Hispanics were crossed out by hand, with a notation in the margin that read, 'Do we need this?' A note affixed to the edited draft, which the officials said was written by Ms. Henke, read 'Make the changes,' and it was signed 'Tracy.'"

The director of the Bureau refused to take out the offending statistics, and six weeks later was told he was being replaced as director after 23 years on the job, and was urged to resign. NY Times story about the study and its controversial editing is here.

The news release was never issued, and the report was posted unannounced on the Justice Department's website along with all their millions of other reports [link sometimes doesn't work--high traffic, or more censorship?] The Times say they did a search of news sources about the study, and found nothing.

So thanks, New York Times, for drawing attention to the statistical evidence that racial profiling goes on in this country. Now we can go back to distrusting our government and all authority figures again.

categories: Politics, Race
posted by amy at 12:09 PM | #