The Need

Five agencies in Santa Cruz County, California were interested in determining whether their agencies were practicing racial profiling.  The media in California and across the nation had been comparing census data to stop data and drawing stark conclusions about law enforcement in many cities.  The chiefs and sheriff in the county wanted to address the issue before someone in the media decided to do their own analysis, and to mitigate risk in the event a lawsuit was filed.  The challenge was to do a study that was meaningful for all the jurisdictions within the county and to do it quickly.

The Solution

We began by educating agency stakeholders on point-to-point surveys, and the importance of measuring specific locations.  We know from 10 years experience that members of racial and ethnic groups do not frequent the same places at the same times.  Differences in culture, tastes, income levels and occupations influence traffic, so that populations differ from location to location.  The problem with the media studies in the California papers was that reporters (not experienced statisticians) were comparing census data to traffic stops.  We consider this simple bivariate analysis to be meaningless.  People travel, shop, work, and journey to different places according to their individual preferences.  Law enforcement patrols and responds to crime according to requests from the community, calls for service and analysis of crime data.  We needed to explain to all stakeholders that the study of this issue is much more complex than anecdotal and simplistic statistics can account for.  Observations needed to be conducted at specific locations at specific times, and compared to stop data from those specific locations, and at those specific times.

The major challenge in this study was to develop an approach and observation survey schedule for all 5 agencies that would:

• account for multiple locations within each jurisdiction
• have a degree of quality defensible in court
• be understood by community members and other agency stakeholders
• be conducted in a short timeframe
• would be valid for Hispanic, Black and Asian motorists

Our design incorporated leveraging surveying skills to teams of surveyors across the county.  To accomplish this, we placed the highest priority on training, testing and project management.  Survey managers were given direct access to Lamberth Consulting project managers, and conducted testing on an on-going basis to ensure the quality of results.

We used a surveying method refined over years of surveying in different jurisdictions.  We differentiated our surveying services from many others studying this issue through structuring surveyor rewards and incentives for high performance.  By doing this, we avoided typical surveying challenges, which can result in faulty surveying and erroneous results, such as: late arrivals (improper time coding of surveys), high turnover (costly, and if not re-trained, results in potentially poor surveying), and coding errors or omissions through un-focused surveying. 

Outcomes

By leveraging our methods and through using sound project management techniques to control for quality, we were able to complete the study ahead of schedule.  Over 400 hours of surveying were conducted across a 24-hour period at more than 20 high activity locations through out the county.  Surveyors captured more than 40,800 cars and race identified approximately 99% of the drivers.