A new report on Florida police suggests rampant racial profiling in the state.
An American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) report released Wednesday shows Florida police are almost twice as likely to stop and ticket a black person for not wearing a seatbelt as they are to stop and ticket a white person. To put it a different way, cops ticketed white people at nearly half the rate of black people when it came to seat belts.
The study analyzed public data on police dating back as far as 2011. In some Florida counties, black drivers were ticketed at a rate four times higher than white drivers. The ACLU wants the Florida Attorney General to investigate further.
“The numbers are shocking,” Nusrat Choudhury, and ACLU Racial Justice Program attorney and co-author of the study, said in a statement. “These racial disparities raise serious concerns that officers are engaging in racial profiling when enforcing the state’s safety belt law. It raises a red flag when seatbelt enforcement by specific agencies leads to racial disparities that exceed even the dramatic statewide gap. These agencies must take steps to address the disparities and promote fair and impartial policing.”
Read the full report here.
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