Minneapolis officials are launching a new effort to find trends in where police make stops, whom they stop — and who is arrested and charged with misdemeanor offenses.
During its approval of the 2015 budget, the City Council separately voted to direct the Police Department and the city attorney's office to gather five years' worth of police stop-and-arrest data. The reports will include information about the race, gender and age of the people involved in incidents from 2010 to 2014, along with where the arrests took place.
The data will be presented to the council's public safety committee by summer.
Council Member Cam Gordon, who introduced the plan, said he's heard concerns about racial profiling and other issues since before he was first elected to the council nearly a decade ago. He brought up the issue in 2008, when he led a similar push to gather data on the city's "lurking" regulation. That law allows police to arrest people who are hanging around public and private spaces, trying not to attract attention, with the intention of committing a crime.
A review of lurking arrests over two years found that black people were eight times more likely to be arrested than white people. Native Americans were arrested at nine times the rate of whites, while homeless people were 20 times more likely to be arrested.
While Gordon was not successful in getting the law overturned, he said he may bring it up again. After months of protests over people killed in altercations with police, he said interest remains high in how police interact with some community members.
Gordon expects that getting a broader range of data could be a better way to reach the city's equity goals than trying to target some specific laws, one by one.
It will be nice to get a big-picture view and get more of an analysis about where [stops and arrests] are occurring and why," he said.
