A small CT town looks at racial disparities in policing. It seeks to direct ‘resources fairly and equitably’

The Clinton Police Department has revealed the results of a data analysis aimed at pinpointing racial disparities in policing.

The initial study, carried out by the California-based Center for Policing Equity, reveals that a disproportionate number of traffic stops in Clinton involve Black and Latino motorists, compared to the town’s overall racial makeup.

“We’ve worked with dozens of departments across the country and we see similar disparities pretty much everywhere we go, so Clinton is not the exception,” said researcher Matthew Graham.

“It’s very simple to get yourself locked into the daily things that you do every day and, and you can easily miss things, maybe miss certain groups,” said Clinton Police Chief Vincent DeMaio at a press conference discussing the results. “To have another set of eyes on our work really helps us direct our resources fairly and equitably throughout all of our operations.”

DeMaio began the process of working with the Center for Policing Equity several years ago, after hearing about their work at a talk at Yale University. The service is voluntary, and provided at no cost to the police department or town residents.

He said the aim is to be open and transparent with the residents of Clinton.

“Let our community know that we’re engaged in doing this job for the right reasons, and having the data to back it up,” he said.

The initial study, called a Justice Navigator Assessment, looked at data from traffic stops, calls for service and officer-initiated activity from 2018 to 2020.

It found that, of all drivers stopped, 7.2% were Black; 11% were Latino and 78% were white. The population of Clinton is 0.4% Black, 9.3% Latino and 88% white.

Once stopped, Black drivers were searched 2.6 times as often as white drivers, and arrested 2.3 times as often as white drivers. Latino drivers were searched 2.1 times as often as white drivers, and arrested 1.7 times as often as white drivers.

Graham said the aim of the study is not to place blame, but to seek solutions.

“In this country we tend to think of racism as defective hearts and minds or bad actors,” he said. “That’s not what we’re talking about here. When we talk about racism and racial disparities, we’re talking about the structural policy level factors that could lead to disparities, even if the entirety of the department, even if every officer in Clinton was 100% free of prejudice or bias.”

Clinton is the third town in Connecticut to publicly release results from a study carried out by the Center for Policing Equity. The Center’s Justice Navigator also contains results from Watertown and Newington.

Center staff say they are working with other communities in the state, but not all have yet gone public with their results.

At the press conference, some residents raised questions about how the large Clinton Crossing mall might be skewing the data collected in the study.

“It basically doubles our town population every single day and even more than that on the weekend,” conceded DeMaio, saying at this point the data has not been broken down to show how many of those stopped were Clinton residents or visitors.

“If it’s location driven as we think, then that’s a reasonable explanation,” he said, of the results. “We can back that up with data. If I have one officer that is stopping a disproportionate number of Black or Hispanics, then I probably got a discipline problem that we need to look at.”

Graham said they may consider including the information in a future iteration of the report, but he cautioned that policing disparities should not be experienced by drivers no matter where they come from.

“Whether they’re from a neighboring jurisdiction or driving through from out of state, or whether they’re local residents, it shouldn’t really matter as to how they encounter policing in your community,” he said.

The Clinton Police Department will continue to work with the Center on the next phase of the process which is aimed at addressing the findings through a harm reduction analysis.

DeMaio described the initial report as just the beginning of the relationship.

“We’re going to continue to work with them to look at any kind of anomalies that we see in the data,” he said. “If there’s any shortcomings or any disparities that need to be addressed, we’re going to address that with them.”

Harriet Jones is a freelance writer in Connecticut.