Quote:
Originally Posted by JonInMiddleGA
Arrests do not occur strictly for contraband nor does the snippet mention the causes for the stops nor the searches.
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Yeah, you can also get stopped for going 5 miles per hour over the speed limit, having a broken taillight, putting the sticker on your license plate a week too late, and a litany of other things. Have a look at the actual report and then tell me you honestly believe that black people are committing traffic violations more than 3.6 times as often as white people in Ferguson.
http://ago.mo.gov/VehicleStops/2013/reports/161.pdf
Take special note of the "reason for stop" statistics. As much as you'd like to imagine that every black person in Ferguson who wasn't caught with contraband must have been guilty of extreme DUIs and/or vehicular homicide, the black/white ratio of people stopped for equipment or license violations is 3x more skewed than the ratio for moving violations. You'll also see that once stopped, black drivers were searched twice as often as were white drivers despite the aforementioned disparity in finding contraband.