Our service this week featured a special guest speaker, Donald Love. Donald works for Empower Missouri, and he has been focusing on the vehicle stop data cities are required to provide. Mr Love has focused particularly on the data on Consent searches performed during Vehicle stops. A consent Search is when the law officer will ask or intimidate you into a consent search of the vehicle that you have a right to decline. Donald showed us the numbers sorted by race as well as other factors. He remarked there has been a reduction in the rates of stops and searches of black drivers. The rate found by the number of stops divided by the population. In the graphic below, are cities where the rate of stop and consent searches of black drivers is less than the rate of white drivers.
To emphasize what these numbers mean, in 2010’s across the state, black people were 1.48 times more likely to be subject to a consent search then white people. Now across the state, black drivers are 0.89 times as likely to be subject to a consent search as white people. Below is the chart of all traffic stops for Phelps County.
This chart shows that in 2022, the Rolla Police department stopped black individuals at a rate a little over 2x that of white people. Residents of Phelps County who are black are almost 3x as likely to get stopped as the white residents.
Donald Love pointed out one interesting trend in the consent search data for all of Missouri. Some of the suburban cities are reporting a higher rate of consent searches for nonresident drivers, regardless of race, over residents rates. Most non residents are coming to the suburban cities for work, school, pleasure, and would have no reason to be pushed for a vehicle search.
Connie brought in a delicious spread of snacks, pictured below.
Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Rolla 
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