A Tale of Two Cities: A Geospatial Analysis of Race and Traffic Stops in Washington, DC

• In Event: Policing and Racialized Communities: Legitimacy, Trust, and Surveillance

Abstract

Traffic stops are the main or sole point of contact that many civilians have with police. These interactions therefore play a major role in shaping civilians’ perceptions of and relationships with police, and officers’ conscious and unconscious choices in whether to make and how to carry out the stop hold significant weight. This paper uses GIS and statistical analysis to map and analyze the most common race of residents in each census tract in Washington, DC, and the races of drivers stopped in the District by the Metropolitan Police Department in order to investigate the hypothesis that drivers are more likely to be stopped in neighborhoods in which they are the racial minority. Drivers of almost all races are more likely to be stopped in majority-Black census tracts, nonwhite drivers are more likely to be stopped in majority-nonwhite census tracts, and Black drivers are more likely to be stopped in majority-Black census tracts. These findings indicate that the out-of-place hypothesis does not hold in all cases, and other factors may explain the observed patterns.

Author

• Moriah Sharpe, American University