CCPD to Hold Community Meeting on Racial Profiling Report

The Culver City Police Department will be holding a community meeting on April 27 at 6:30 pm in the Mike Balkman Council Chambers at City Hall to discuss the 2022 Racial Profiling Report. This is a report created by the CCPD.

The department’s report states that “The Culver City Police Department collected RIPA data on 7,127 individuals between January 1, 2022, and December 31, 2022. The information that was collected was based on the officer’s perception of the individual’s identity (i.e. race, gender, sexual orientation, age, and several other factors) and the actions taken during the stop (i.e. arrest, no action, citation issued, etc.).”

In contrast, the State of California RIPA Board has issued its own report, and it includes a statistical analysis of CCPD RIPA data reported in 2021. With this law dating back to 2015, this is the sixth edition of this report from the state. The CCPD was not required to make a report until 2023, but began collecting data in 2020.

The State’s report noted that of all ethnicities, Latino drivers were the most frequently stopped (42.4%) and that men were the gender most likely to be stopped (72.1%) The results of being pulled over with ‘No Action Taken’ by police impacted Black motorists the highest (13.2%) almost twice the rate of any other ethnicity. Locally, those numbers are higher.

An independent analysis of the data from the state of California shows that Black individuals were stopped at a rate 2.44 times their share of the state’s population, but in Culver City, the police stop Black individuals at a rate 3.11 times their share of Culver City’s population.

Throughout the state, police are more likely to search Black folks than white folks by 0.4 percentage points—LAPD is worse at 1.6 percentage points—and CCPD is an enormous 5.3 percentage points more likely to search Black folks than whites (more than ten times higher than the statewide number.) In fact, the police are less likely to find any evidence of contraband on the Black individuals they’re searching than the white individuals they’re searching.

Additionally, in Culver City, the odds of CCPD officers using force during a stop were 1.89 times as high for Black individuals compared to white individuals.

In CCPD’s independent report, they reflect on the idea that any statistics that are based on the demographics of Culver City’s residents are not reliable, suggesting that more useful statistics would use the daytime population of the city or the demographics of motorists in Culver City. It’s important to understand that only statistics cited above in regard to the population of the city are based on the demographics of Culver City’s residents. Other data sets are not framed in the same way, and include all drivers using Culver City roadways.

Intentionally or unintentionally, using a different measure to compare similar data creates anomaly.

The report from the CCPD, which was published on April 13, 2023, can be read in its entirely on the Culver City Police Department website as a PDF entitled “Racial and Identity Profiling Act 2022 Report.”

The data from the State of California can be found in tables in The State of California report; Appendix C of this document (search for “Culver City”)

Judith Martin-Straw