No racial profiling by Kingston police

Last night, I downloaded the study that purported to show that the Kingston police had used racial profiling. The study shows no such thing.

Here are some of the numbers from the study:

If you divide the population into white and non-white, you'll find that non-whites accounted for 7.45% of all stops, compared to being 7.26% of the population. Pretty close, huh? Whites were 92.7% of the population, and 92.6% of the stops!

However, if you look at the individuals who were stopped, the figures are even more interesting. Individual non-whites were stopped 7.04% of the time, compared to being 7.26% of the population.

How on earth does this indicate bias?

It's only when you dig deeper into the non-white category do things happen. For, instance, the only group that gets stopped more than whites is blacks. Asians, South Asians, Hispanics and even Natives get stopped less than white. West Asians are just slightly higher than whites.

And, if you dig deeper into the black category, you'll find that most of the stops were of the 15-24 age group. This begs the question - what is exactly happening within that group. Shouldn't we have some non-qualititive answers here? The study really points in one direction - and that this small group of people are either being targeted (I doubt it), or there is certainly something to investigate.

Here are the numbers: Out of a population of 100 blacks between the age of 15-24, 41 have been stopped by the police; Out of a population of 585 blacks that are not 15-24, only 62 have been stopped by police - a difference of 300%.

And, many of the black 15-24 year olds are getting stopped more than once.

I think the study is pointing in a clear direction - and it isn't in the direction of racial profiling.