Louisiana police depts. in violation of data reporting law, report says

26th November 2018   ·   0 Comments

By Fritz Esker
Contributing Writer

A new report from the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) calls on Louisiana police departments to comply with Louisiana law requiring data collection and publication on traffic stops.

The report, “Police and Data Collection: Why Louisiana Needs Reform,” condemned what was called a near-universal disregard by Louisiana law enforcement agencies for releasing records on information like stops made, demographics of the people who are stopped, the nature of the alleged violations and the results of the stops.

The Louisiana Legislature passed a law in 2001 requiring law enforcement agencies to collect data on traffic stops and report the information to state officials. The state is then required to publish annual data on the subject. However, the law exempts agencies that have policies on racial profiling from having to collect and publish the data.

“Law enforcement agencies are responsible for enforcing and upholding our laws, but for the last 17 years, they have blatantly disregarded a law that mandates data reporting,” said Lisa Graybill, deputy legal director for the SPLC. “It is time to require data collection, so we can hold Louisiana’s law enforcement and state officials accountable and bring transparency to policing efforts.”

In September, the SPLC published the report “Racial Profiling in Louisiana: Unconstitutional and Counterproductive” on the racial profiling policies of police departments around the state. In that study, requests were made to 331 law enforcement agencies. Only 201 responded, and of those, 109 reported they had no policy on racial profiling and are thus required to collect traffic citation data. The New Orleans Police Department does have a bias-free policing policy to combat racial profiling. But the SPLC says this is not enough.

“We should require data collection of all agencies – regardless of their policies,” said Jamila Johnson, senior supervising attorney for the SPLC. “Comprehensive data collection would give Louisiana a valuable resource that could reduce crime, save tax dollars, promote professional police work, and build trust between communities and law enforcement. Without data, agencies are operating blind and the public is left in the dark.”

Only two agencies, the Forrest Hill and Grosse Tete Police Departments, submit copies of traffic citations to the Office of Motor Vehicles.

The Department of Public Safety and Corrections has never written an annual report on traffic citation data, despite the 2001 law’s requirement to do so. But the department claimed to the SPLC that no Louisiana law enforcement agency has ever submitted the necessary data to make a report.

The SPLC’s report states that proper data collection can help police departments for a number of reasons. One is that it can let departments know if racial profiling and other abuses of power are specific to certain officers or endemic across the department. It will also help them understand if racial profiling is happening in the first place.

The data collection could also be used to track problematic officers if they switched departments. Since 2007, at least 51 Louisiana police officers who have been terminated for misconduct or resigned in lieu of termination have been hired by other departments in the state.

The SPLC’s report states that Louisiana police should be required to report data on clearance/solve rates of serious crimes and how many stops and arrests they make for low-level crimes. With proper data collection, the public would better be able to judge if more resources should be allocated to solving serious crimes.

Among other recommendations in the report were calls for standardized forms for reporting data on traffic stops and public penalties for failure to collect and release data like ineligibility for funding, equipment or assistance from the state.

Included in the report is one last sobering statistic: if each of the United States was counted as its own country, Louisiana would have the second highest incarceration rate (1,052 out of every 100,000 people) in the world, trailing only Oklahoma.

The New Orleans Police Department and Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office did not return our requests for comment as of press time.

This article originally published in the November 26, 2018 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.