Review the attached article titled Beyond Profiling: The Institutional Sources of Racial Disparities in Policing.  

• Summarize the arguments that the authors make about investigative stops in respect to contributing to racial disparity?  Do you agree with there argument that investigative stops should be considered institutionalized practice. 
• Summarize what you learn from reviewing the Methods section of the article in respect how research on ‘investigative stops’ is conducted and how the authors conducted their research for this article? 
• According to the authors, how does the ‘institutionalized’ practice of ‘investigative stops’ harm individuals and the community? 
• What recommendations are provided?  

For a counterpoint, review the attached article titled Biased Based Policing Reports.

• Provide a summary and reaction to what you learn.
• After considering both of these articles, what are your conclusions?

Biased-Based Policing Reports Are Failing

the Police and the Community
Why Agencies Need to Stop Using Census Data

Richard R. Johnson, Ph.D.

September, 2016

Recent public opinion surveys have revealed that the vast majority of Americans believe that use

of racial profiling by the police is widespread.1 This is deeply disturbing for two reasons. First, it
is disturbing because it undermines police legitimacy among the vast majority of our citize ns.

Second, it is disturbing because the vast majority of law enforcement officers I have known do not
engage in bias-based policing. While racial profiling likely occurs among a small number of
individual officers acting outside the bounds of their oath to uphold the Constitution, it is unlike ly

that racial profiling is systemic to law enforcement in the United States.

This begs the question, then, why do so many people perceive that racial profiling is widespread?
We could blame individual members of the news media that seek to raise their ratings by stoking
the flames of controversy, or certain protest organizations that seek to capitalize on distrust of the

police. To be sure, these sources have contributed to the problem. Another factor that has also
contributed to the problem, however, is the fundamentally flawed information that many

law enforcement agencies have given the public through their biased-based policing data that

was gathered and reported incorrectly.

Many law enforcement agencies gather data on the race and gender of the individuals their officers
stop, search, and arrest. They report these data to the public in a biased-based policing report.

Agencies produce these reports for a variety of reasons, such as statutory requirements, as part of
their compliance with CALEA Standard 1.2.9.d, or simply out of a sincere desire to embrace
transparency. While most law enforcement agencies, and individual officers, claim they do not

racially profile, the vast majority of these reports show members of minority groups, especially
African-American men, are disproportionately stopped, searched, and arrested. Why? One factor

at work is the use of incorrect research methodologies and measures that are biased (often
unintentionally) against officers from the start. One of the most damaging of these incorrect
methodologies is the use of U.S. Census data as a benchmark comparison.

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Instructor

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Benchmarks

In order for any racial profiling data collection activity to be meaningful, the racial composition of
police stops, searches, and arrests need to be compared to something. A benchmark is generally
defined as a point of reference from which measurements may be made; something that serves as

a standard by which others may be measured or judged; or a standardized problem or test that
serves as a basis for evaluation or comparison. In the context of biased-based policing evaluatio ns,

a benchmark is the percentage of a racial or gender group that one would expect to be encountered
if officers were not biased.

For example, imagine that 20% of the people speeding down a particular stretch of roadway were
male and Hispanic. This makes 20% our benchmark for speeding stops of male Hispanics. We

would expect that unbiased stops by police for speeding in this area would show that only about
20% of those stopped for speeding were male Hispanic drivers. However, where do we get these
benchmarks? Unfortunately, most of the benchmarks used are fatally flawed. These flawed

benchmarks consistently suggest officer bias, regardless of what officers are actually doing. The
most common flawed benchmark is U.S. Census data.

Census Data

The U.S. Census Bureau collects data on the social and demographic characteristics of the
individuals who live within the U.S. This data is freely and easily accessible from the U.S. Census

Bureau website and can be analyzed within different geographic regions, down to the zip code and
census block levels. Many have used Census data as their benchmark for police activity because
of its ease of access. The problem, however, is that the demographic characteristics of the

people living at any one location have nothing to do with the driving population there, nor

who is breaking the law in any specific area. We use our vehicles to travel to places away from

our homes, as people generally do not work, shop, or recreate in their homes. Two studies illust rate
this well.

The first study, conducted by sociologists Albert Meehan and Michael Ponder at Oakland
University, examined the racial composition of drivers across one suburb in the Detroit area.

According to the U.S. Census, the suburb they studied had a population that was 3% African-
American, but the city also contained a popular shopping district and a major auto factory. The
researchers placed pairs of observers at major intersections across the three police beats in the city,

and the observers recorded the races of 3,840 drivers who stopped at these intersections. Despite
the city Census population of 3% African-American, in the police beat that bordered the city of

Detroit, 49% of the drivers were African-American. The other two beats revealed 11% and 3% of
the drivers were African-American.2

Think about that. What if the officers working these different beats stopped African-Amer ica n
drivers as the exact rates that African-Americans drove in these beats? Any study of this particular

suburb using 3% African-American as its benchmark would falsely claim that officers working in
two of the beats were racially profiling. When the stops from all three beats are combined as

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department-wide data, the whole department would incorrectly appear to be racially profilin g
because more than 3% of their stops were of African-American drivers, despite the fact African-

Americans actually made up far more than 3% of the drivers on the road.

Another example was a study, of which I was a part, that was conducted by a research team headed
by criminologist Robin Engel at the University of Cincinnati. This study examined 315,705 traffic
stops conducted by troopers of the Pennsylvania State Police. These stops occurred on interstate

highways, U.S. highways, state routes, county roads, and village and city streets. An examina t io n
of these stops revealed that 96% of drivers stopped by the police were stopped outside of their

home zip codes. Furthermore, 66% were stopped outside of their home county, and 27% were
stopped outside of their home state. This study went on to conduct observations of the races of
66,741 drivers along various roadways in 27 counties of Pennsylvania. When compared to the

Census statistics for each township where these observations were made, the Census statistics on
race never matched the racial composition of the drivers that were observed.3 Census data is no

reflection of who is driving in a given area.

Not only are Census statistics inaccurate measures of who is driving in any given area, Census

data also fail to identify the racial and ethnic composition of who should actually be stopped by
the police. Just because 49% of the drivers in a police beat are African-American, that does not

mean 49% of the people stopped by officers should be African-American. If African-America ns
were stopped just because they are driving in an area, without having done anything wrong, this
would amount to stops for “driving while black.” Instead we need a measure of the racial

composition of the drivers who are driving poorly by breaking traffic laws and driving unsafe
vehicles (equipment violations). It is traffic law violators who should be at risk of traffic stops if

no bias is present. The Census data in no way measures driving behavior.

Alternative Benchmark

So what should be used as a proper benchmark for these types of reports and studies? Hiring a

group of researchers to go out and record the races and traffic violations of drivers across your
jurisdiction is usually too time-consuming and expensive for most law enforcement agencies. A
simple solution, however, is to collect race and ethnicity data on all traffic crashes in your

jurisdiction and use this data as your driver benchmark. While no state currently collects race data
on its state vehicle crash form, if your agency starts collecting race data in-house, your agency will

eventually have a benchmark of bad drivers across the various beats of your jurisdiction.

Using traffic crash data as a traffic stop benchmark has a number of advantages. First, it identifies

the drivers most likely to be stopped because crashes result from moving or equipment violat io n s
of the law. While there are some people who are blameless for their crash (such as the person

waiting at a red light who is hit from behind), all crashes had at least one driver or equipment error
at fault, and many had multiple drivers at fault. Second, officers investigating traffic accidents can
verify the race and ethnicity of the driver when they complete their report, as opposed to a

researcher trying to determine a driver’s race in a passing car. Third, as traffic crashes occur almost
everywhere (even off of public roadways in parking lots and driveways) they are good samples of

the bad driver or poorly maintained vehicle population throughout a district or beat. Research
observers tend to focus just on certain thoroughfares. Finally, crash data come from the citize nr y

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who report crashes to the police, so no suggestion can be made that there was bias by the police in
gathering this data.4

If you agency is currently using Census data as your benchmark, it is imperative that you stop
immediately and find a valid benchmark like the alternative discussed here. Using Census data is
rigged against your officers as it almost always suggests disproportionate stops of minority group

members, even when no officer bias occurred. If some outside individual or organization proposes
to analyze your officers’ stops using Census data as their benchmark, oppose it vehemently, using

the studies cited here to support your argument. If your state collects statewide data, as does
Illinois, Missouri, and Texas, lobby your state lawmakers to stop using Census data as the
benchmark comparison and begin to collect valid benchmark comparison data by modifying the

state vehicle crash form to include race and ethnicity information.

Conclusion

The overwhelming majority of racial profiling studies done by academics, and biased-based

policing self-examinations by police departments, have produced results that people of color,
especially African-Americans, are disproportionately stopped by the police.5 It is likely, however,

that the majority of these findings are in error as most relied on methodological errors that were
guaranteed to show bias even when there was none. Using Census statistics as a benchmark, that
in no way resemble the driving population or the traffic violator population, is just one of these

many methodological errors.

The Dolan Consulting Group LLC now offers a training workshop that addresses these many
errors, and offers suggestions on how to correct them. Biased-Based Policing Reports: Best
Practices is a one-day course that teaches personnel from law enforcement agencies how these

studies should be conducted and their reports written. It explains how to collect, analyze, and
present your information in a manner that creates the least chance of misinterpretation or

manipulation by the media, and presents the work of your agency in a fair manner. The informa t io n
offered in this workshop is crucial to the creation of a data collection effort and report that is truly
unbiased against the hard-working and principled officers who are policing their communities in

a fair and impartial manner.

References

1 Weitzer, R., & Tuch, S. A. (2005). Racially-biased policing: determinants of citizen

perceptions. Social Forces, 83(3), 1009-1030.
2 Weitzer, R., & Tuch, S. A. (2005). Racially-biased policing: determinants of citizen
perceptions. Social Forces, 83(3), 1009-1030.
3 Engel, R. S., Calnon, J. M., Tillyer, R., Johnson, R. R., Liu, L., Wang, X. (2005). Project on
Police-Citizen Contacts: Year 2 Final Report. Cincinnati, OH: University of Cincinnati.
4 Withrow, B. L., & Williams, H. (2015). Proposing a benchmark based on vehicle collision data
in racial profiling research. Criminal Justice Review, 40(4), 449-469.

Home Page

5 Withrow, B. L. (2006). Racial Profiling: From Rhetoric to Reason. Upper Saddle River, NJ:
Pearson / Prentice Hall.

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168 Public Administration Review • March | April 2017

Public Administration Review,

Vol. 77, Iss. 2, pp. 168–178. © 2016 by

The American Society for Public Administration.

DOI: 10.1111/puar.12702.

Beyond Profiling:
The Institutional Sources of Racial Disparities in Policing

Donald Haider-Markel is professor

and chair of political science at the

University of Kansas. His research and

teaching is focused on the representation

of interests in the policy process and the

dynamics between public opinion, political

behavior, and public policy.

E-mail: prex@ku.edu

Steven Maynard-Moody is professor

in the School of Public Affairs and

Administration and director of the Institute

for Policy and Social Research at the

University of Kansas. He is coauthor, with

Charles Epp and Donald Haider-Markel, of

Pulled Over: How Police Stops Define Race
and Citizenship (University of Chicago,
2014). With Michael Musheno, his current

research and writing extends the theoretical

frame first expressed in their book Cops,
Teachers, Counselors: Stories from the
Front Lines of Public Service (University of
Michigan Press, 2003).

E-mail: smm@ku.edu

Charles R. Epp is University

Distinguished Professor in the School

of Public Affairs and Administration at

the University of Kansas. He is author of

three books published by the University

of Chicago Press, including Making Rights
Real (2009) on police reform and Pulled
Over: How Police Stops Define Race and
Citizenship (2014), with the coauthors of
this article, on racial disparities in police

stops.

E-mail: chuckepp@ku.edu

Abstract : American policing faces a crisis of legitimacy. A key source of this crisis is a widespread police practice
commonly endorsed by police leaders to fight crime. This is the investigatory stop, used to check out people who seem
suspicious and to seize illegal drugs and guns and make arrests. Using data from an original scientific survey of
drivers in the Kansas City metropolitan area, the authors show that racial disparities in police stops are concentrated
in investigatory vehicle stops. In these stops, but not others, officers disproportionately stop African Americans and
question and search them. The overwhelming majority of people stopped in this way are innocent, and the experience
causes psychological harm and erodes trust in and cooperation with the police. Many of the most controversial police
shootings during the past two years occurred in these stops. Reforming this practice is an essential step toward restoring
trust in the police.

Practitioner Points
• Although evidence of their effectiveness is not clear, investigatory police stops (commonly using minor

violations as a pretext for a more searching inquiry) are widely used by local police departments as a crime-
fighting tactic.

• Most people stopped in investigatory stops are innocent, yet they are subjected to intrusive questioning
(e.g., “Why are you in the neighborhood?”) and searches, leading to feelings of fear and of being “violated.”

• Overuse of investigatory police stops erodes trust in, and cooperation with, the police, especially among
African Americans, who are especially likely to be stopped.

• There is insufficient oversight of the practice, as many investigatory stops yield no citation and so are not
presently recorded or reported.

• To enable oversight of this practice, law enforcement agencies should require officers to record and report all
stops they make, including the race and ethnicity of the driver and whether a warning or citation is issued;
these data should be analyzed to check for patterns of racial disparity. Surveys of satisfaction with police
services should include questions regarding residents’ experiences in police stops, including stops for minor
violations.

Charles R. Epp
Steven Maynard-Moody
Donald Haider-Markel
University of Kansas

Policing in the United States is in crisis, a “perfect storm” of popular protest and media coverage of egregious violations (Weitzer
2015 , 475). Since the protests in Ferguson,
Missouri, over the shooting death of Michael
Brown on August 9, 2014, protests have erupted
in Baltimore, Charlotte, Cincinnati, Chicago,
Cleveland, Los Angeles, Madison, Minneapolis-St.
Paul, New York City, Oakland, St. Louis, Tulsa, and
such smaller places as Hempstead, Texas; North
Charleston, South Carolina; Pasco, Washington; and
Stonewall, Mississippi. The relationship between the
police and these communities, so essential to public
safety and the rights and dignity of members of the
public, is strained, if not broken. Nor is the problem
isolated locally. A recent national survey found
that 84 percent of African Americans believe that

blacks are treated less fairly by the police than whites
(Stepler 2016 ).

Official mechanisms of police accountability have
been mobilized. Eighteen individual officers were
criminally indicted for police killings in 2015, the
last year for which data are available, roughly triple
the number in past years (Babwin 2015 ; Wing 2015 ).
The U.S. Department of Justice has conducted formal
investigations in Ferguson, Baltimore, and Chicago,
on top of several others begun before the events in
Ferguson. Several prominent police chiefs, including
Baltimore police commissioner Anthony Batts,
Chicago police superintendent Garry McCarthy, and
San Francisco police chief Gregory P. Suhr, as well
as a series of chiefs in Oakland, have been fired. The
Barack Obama administration convened a high-level

Beyond Profi ling: The Institutional Sources of Racial Disparities in Policing 169

task force to suggest reforms of the problems of police violence
and police-community conflict (President ’ s Task Force on 21st
Century Policing 2015 ). In all, police departments, and the local
governments they represent, are under mounting pressure to do
something.

But what is the problem, and what should be done about it?
Answers to these questions cluster into two broad types. One is that
these tensions reflect the persistence of racist attitudes (whether
intentional or implicit) among too many individual police officers.
These individual-level biases, it is said, lead some officers to unfairly
stop African American drivers or unnecessarily escalate the use of
force when dealing with African American suspects. Locating the
problem in individual beliefs or attitudes leads to reforms aimed at
training officers away from acting on these beliefs or attitudes. This
perspective is supported by a large body of psychological research and
expressed in the efforts of major U.S. police professional associations
and the Obama administration ’ s Task Force on 21st Century Policing
to favor better training and control of individual frontline officers
(President ’ s Task Force on 21st Century Policing 2015 ).

Although part of the problem surely is errant individual officers, this
diagnosis and remedy misses how some of policing ’ s institutional
structures and practices contribute to racial

discrimination.

Put
simply, the problem is not errant individual
officers alone but official policy and practice
more broadly. In this article, we focus on
these policies and practices and how they
contribute to racial disparities in who is
stopped, searched, and arrested. In doing so,
we join a growing body of scholarship on the
institutional sources of racial disparities (Ward
and Rivera 2014 ). Thus, there is growing
research on how institutionalized practices
in education contribute to racial disparities
in educational outcomes (see, e.g., Lucas 1999 , 2001 ). Health care
research reveals that racial disparities in health outcomes grow not
only from economic and geographic variations in access to health
care but also from institutionalized practices related to diagnosis
and treatment (see, e.g., Smedley, Stith, and Nelson 2002 ). We will
argue that the current crisis in American policing is caused as much
by standard police enforcement practices at the institutional level as
by individual-level deviations from accepted standards.

Specifically, we argue that the investigatory police stop is a key source
of racial disparities in police enforcement and a key source of
African Americans’ distrust of the police. An investigatory stop is
a stop of a driver (or pedestrian) that is made not to enforce traffic
laws, vehicle codes, or the laws governing pedestrian activity but to
check out people (or vehicles) who look suspicious. Is this driver
carrying a gun or illegal drugs? What is he up to? Why is he in
this neighborhood? Is there a warrant for his arrest? Stops for these
purposes are made “proactively,” meaning they are made not on the
basis of an observed violation but on a more inchoate suspicion:
officers are to stop people to find out whether they are doing
something wrong.

We will show that investigatory stops are a deep source of
frustration and indignation among those who are stopped. We will

also argue that the practice of investigatory stops has become so
frequently employed and so widespread that it is now a significant
source of distrust in the police, especially among African Americans.
We will further argue that recognizing these facts offers promise of
a more effective reform program than the psychological explanation
alone. The psychological approach to police reform views the
problem as the “manner” by which officers carry out investigatory
stops, meaning how politely they carry them out, not that they carry
them out so frequently (Stuntz 2002 , 2174, reflecting the research
of Tyler 2001 ; see esp. Tyler and Wakslak 2004 ). The psychological
approach thus favors reforms aimed at training officers to improve
their manners: to be more respectful in carrying out these stops.
Although people who are stopped by the police appreciate being
treated respectfully, our data reveal that people who are stopped
for investigatory purposes resent the experience even if the officer is
impeccably polite.

The problem, in other words, is the investigatory stop itself,
not (only) officers who are carrying it out improperly; it is an
institutional problem, not merely an individual problem. In recent
decades, investigatory stops have become one of professional
policing ’ s leading crime-fighting tactics, widely and frequently
deployed in communities across the country. Yet, as we will show,
this tactic harms the people who are stopped even when the officers

who do it follow the best training protocols.
This harm and the distrust it produces falls
disproportionately on racial minorities, as
most of the people stopped in this way are
African Americans and Latinos.

Presently, many police departments encourage
their officers to make investigatory stops
to fight crime yet carry out little oversight
of whether these stops have the harmful
effects we document here. As the Justice

Department ’ s report on the Baltimore Police Department observed,
the likelihood of constitutional violations and harm to good police–
community relations is greater where, as in Baltimore, a police
department “does not collect reliable data on stops and searches,
has no mechanism for identifying patterns or trends in its officers’
stops, searches, and arrests, and conducts little substantive review of
officers’ reasons for taking particular enforcement actions” (2016,
26–27).

Thus, a final implication of our analysis is that evaluating police
performance only in relation to crime rates and crime-clearance
rates is shortsighted in that public trust in the police is affected as
much by people ’ s experiences in police stops. These stops are often
people ’ s most direct (and often viscerally powerful) experience of
the police. Police departments should gather data on them, and
city governments should exercise oversight of the practice. When
city governments survey their constituents about their perceptions
of police services (see Alfred Tat-Kai Ho and Wonhyuk Cho in
this issue) without asking about experiences in police stops, they
are likely to miss the single most substantial influence on these
attitudes.

We proceed as follows: We first summarize the social scientific
literature on investigatory stops. We then summarize our research

Although part of the problem
surely is errant individual offi c-
ers, this diagnosis and remedy
misses how some of policing’s

institutional structures and
practices contribute to racial

discrimination.

170 Public Administration Review • March | April 2017

on how, in the 1980s and 1990s, police leaders developed and
refined the practice of investigatory stops and how this practice
has been widely adopted by police departments as a key crime-
fighting tactic. Then we summarize our data, reported elsewhere
(Epp, Maynard-Moody, and Haider-Markel 2014 ), showing that
investigatory stops are the key source of racial disparities in who is
stopped by the police, who is subjected to intrusive questioning and
searches during stops, and in people ’ s trust in the police.

This article builds on our analysis of these issues in Pulled Over:
How Police Stops Define Race and Citizenship
(2014). Here, we go beyond our analysis
in that book by arguing that widespread
investigatory stops of African Americans and
Latinos contribute directly to the present crisis
in American

policing.

Until the police accept
this basic truth and rein in this practice, the
current crisis is unlikely to be fully resolved.

Past Studies of Investigatory Police Stops
Past studies of investigatory stops typically have focused on one or
the other of two types of these stops: stops of pedestrians (“stop-
and-frisks”) and stops of vehicles. Pedestrian stop-and-frisks were
authorized by the U.S. Supreme Court in Terry v. Ohio (392 U.S. 1
[1968]) and are inherently investigatory, meaning that their essential
purpose is to see whether the person who is stopped is engaged
in criminality. As John A. Eterno, Christine S. Barrow, and Eli B.
Silverman (in this issue) observe, these stops provoke widespread
frustration among the people subjected to them. Although Floyd
v. New York (959 F. Supp. 2d 540 [2013]) struck down that city ’ s
widespread use of stop-and-frisk as racially discriminatory, Terry ’s
central holding remains valid law—and stop-and-frisks are still
widely used throughout the country.

If stop-and-frisks are inherently investigatory, vehicle stops, by
contrast, include both standard stops to enforce traffic safety, which
are generally not aimed at criminal investigation, and investigatory
stops, which, like stop-and-frisks, are to check out the driver for
criminal activity. Both types of vehicle stops are based on state
statutes governing driving and the condition of vehicles. The U.S.
Supreme Court in Whren v. U.S. (517 U.S. 806 [1996]) ruled that
stops justified by minor traffic violations may be used as a pretext
for a criminal investigation.

Although major U.S. police departments require officers to report
stop-and-frisks as a distinct activity, they typically do not do so
regarding investigatory vehicle stops, treating them instead as simply
a vehicle stop like any other. Thus, while there are administrative
data on pedestrian stop-and-frisks, only rarely are investigatory
vehicle stops specifically identified in administrative data. This
difference in reporting requirements may reflect the legal differences
between pedestrian and vehicle stops.

These dissimilarities in law and administrative data have led to
differences in how scholars have studied these two types of stops (of
pedestrians versus of vehicles). With widely available administrative
data on stop-and-frisks, there are excellent studies of racial bias in
these stops (see, e.g., Gelman, Fagan, and Kiss 2007 ). By contrast,
the vast majority of studies of racial bias in vehicle stops have not

conceptualized investigatory stops as a distinct type of vehicle stop
(see, e.g., Lundman and Kaufman 2003 ; Petrocelli, Piquero, and
Smith 2002 ; Smith and Petrocelli 2001 ; Tillyer and Engel 2013 ).
As a consequence, most studies of vehicle stops implicitly view
racial disparities in these stops not as a product of a police policy to
encourage investigatory stops but as the result of individual officers’
discretionary choices about whom to stop. For example, Tillyer and
Engel ( 2013 ) advance a “social conditioning” (i.e., psychological)
model of the sources of racial disparities in vehicle stops.

These differences between the studies of
pedestrian versus vehicle stops also have led
to somewhat diverse estimates of the depth
of racial disparities in the two types of stops.
Substantial racial disparities are found in
administrative data on pedestrian stop-and-
frisks. Thus, Gelman, Fagan, and Kiss ( 2007 ,
819–20), studying pedestrian stops in New
York City and controlling for precinct-level

variations in racial demographics and crime rates, found that African
Americans and Hispanics were stopped 2.5 times and 1.9 times,
respectively, more than whites when the officer was investigating a
violent crime and 1.8 and 1.6 times, respectively, more than whites
when the officer was investigating a weapons violation.

By contrast, past studies of vehicle stops have reported racial
disparities that, while significant, are in our view muddied by the
difficulty of using administrative data to distinguish investigatory
vehicle stops from other types of vehicle stops. For example, Tillyer
and Engel ( 2013 ), studying all vehicle stops made by a large Ohio
police agency, found that young black men were 1.3 times more
likely than all other drivers to be issued a warning but somewhat
less likely to be issued a citation. This difference is consistent with
the hypothesis that stops of young black men are more likely to be
made to investigate the driver for serious criminality (and then to
release them with a warning for a minor violation) than to sanction
him for a more serious traffic violation. Still, the degree of racial
disparity is markedly less than found in studies of pedestrian stops
in which the investigatory stop-and-frisk is sharply delineated in
the administrative data. As we will show, clearly distinguishing
investigatory and traffic safety stops yields estimates of the racial
disparity in investigatory stops that are remarkably similar to those
found in studies of pedestrian stop-and-frisks.

Our Contribution: Investigatory Stops as an
Institutionalized Practice
Our research goes beyond earlier studies by conceptualizing
investigatory stops as a distinct type of vehicle stop, by developing
a measure of its prevalence, and then by studying the effects of
this type of stop on the attitudes of the people who are stopped
in this way. Central to these advances is our conceptualization of
investigatory vehicle stops as a distinct institutionalized practice. By
this we mean that the investigatory stop has become a commonly
structured police practice that, while not required by any specific
official policy, is supported and legitimated by rules, training, and
law and has spread widely to become a commonly accepted activity.

We developed the concept of an institutionalized practice to help
make sense of why police departments widely deploy investigatory

Widespread investigatory stops
of African Americans and

Latinos contribute directly to
the present crisis in American

policing.

Beyond Profi ling: The Institutional Sources of Racial Disparities in Policing 171

vehicle stops even though there is no common federal mandate to do
so and police departments are governed locally. The structure of U.S.
policing is generally thought to ensure variation from department to
department rather than commonality: the police are divided among
tens of thousands of local agencies and dozens of state agencies.
These myriad agencies operate under no common legal regime other
than the constitutional law of criminal procedure. In spite of this
common overarching legal regime, local political control is said to
pull police departments in widely varying directions.

Nonetheless, police departments increasingly have adopted common
organizational policies and practices (Epp 2009 ; Walker 1993 ), and
we believe the investigatory stop is one such common practice. Our
own research in the Kansas City metropolitan area documented the
widespread deployment of investigatory stops among police agencies
throughout that metropolitan area (Epp, Maynard-Moody, and
Haider-Markel 2014 ). The police training manuals that we relied
on in our book to illustrate this practice drew advice and guidance
from police departments of virtually every size in all regions of the
country (2014, 22–23). Recent ethnographic studies that follow up
on our research observe investigatory stops in many jurisdictions
in North Carolina (Coleman and Stuesse 2015 ) and in Nashville,
Tennessee (Armenta 2016a , 2016b ). The recent official report on
problems in the Chicago police department observes high numbers
of investigatory stops, especially of African Americans, in that city
(Police Accountability Task Force 2016 ). Our analysis of official
publications of the International Association of Chiefs of Police
documents widespread support among police agencies for using
investigatory vehicle stops as a crime-fighting tactic (Epp, Maynard-
Moody, and Haider-Markel 2014 , 36). In sum, there is considerable
evidence of convergence among police agencies in training and
directing their officers to carry out investigatory stops. We do not
claim that every police department in the United States directs
its officers to carry out investigatory stops. Rather, we claim that
investigatory stops are widely deployed by many police departments
of all sizes in all regions of the country and indeed are viewed as
a “best practice,” by which we mean that police leaders view this
practice as professionally vetted and effective.

Our concept of institutionalized practices draws on neoinstitutional
theory to explain such a convergence among diverse police agencies.
Neoinstitutional theory helps explain how separate organizations
operating in a shared institutional field like policing often come
to adopt common practices (DiMaggio and
Powell 1983 ; Dobbin and Sutton 1998 ;
Edelman 1992 ; March and Olsen 1984 ). The
general lesson of these studies is that common
institutionalized practices emerge from the
sharing of ideas through professional networks
rather than from official mandates. Over time,
these practices take on “value beyond the
technical requirements of the task at hand” (Selznick 1957 , 17). Put
another way, institutionalized practices come to be viewed not only
as effective but as professionally right,

proper, and lawful.

Through
these processes of institutionalization, many diverse organizations
in different legal jurisdictions come to have similar organizational
structures and foster similar practices (DiMaggio and Powell
1983 ; Epp 2009 ; Garrow and Grusky 2012 ; Maynard-Moody and
Musheno 2015 ).

Evidence of the widespread use of investigatory stops dates to the
landmark studies of policing conducted in the wake of the 1960s
urban riots. The Kerner Commission, appointed by President
Lyndon B. Johnson, reported that the riots grew out of urban
poverty and residents’ intense resentment of police stops and
searches (National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders
1968 ). The commission reported that investigatory police stops
and searches were widely used in the cities that experienced
riots and that resentment over these stops triggered many of the
riots. Thus, the San Diego police had conducted from 20,000 to
40,000 stop-and-frisks per month, particularly in African American
neighborhoods (Lohman and Misner 1966 , 127–34). A survey of
citizens in 15 cities that had experienced riots found that while 6
percent of whites reported that police had frisked or searched them
without a good reason, 22 percent of African Americans reported
this experience (Campbell and Schuman 1969 , table IV).

The riots of the 1960s were, in part, uprisings against the practice
of aggressive police stops. Many police departments certainly viewed
them in this way and responded by backing away from their official
commitment to aggressive stops. In the wake of that shift, studies
of policing in urban neighborhoods in the 1970s described random
police patrols—but without the widespread aggressive stops of the
1960s (Anderson 1978 ; Williams 1992 ).

Investigatory stops were reinvented after 1978 in a remarkable
burst of activity. It began with James Q. Wilson and Barbara
Boland ’ s call for police departments to revive what they termed
“aggressive patrol”: “maximize[ing] the number of interventions
in and observations of the community,” or, in other words,
stopping and searching as many drivers as possible, “especially
suspicious ones” (1978, 370–73). The federal government ’ s “war
on drugs” brought this recommendation to fruition. Operation
Pipeline, a key initiative of the Drug Enforcement Agency in the
1980s, trained state and local police nationwide to use pretextual
traffic stops as a means to question and search large numbers
of drivers for illegal drugs (Harris 2002 ; Webb 1999 ). Training
films identified Hispanics and African Americans as more likely
to be carrying drugs (Webb 1999 ). By the late 1990s, the DEA
reportedly had trained some 27,000 state and local police officers
in the practice of pretextual stops, and many of these officers
went on to train others (Allen-Bell 1997 ; Harris 2002 , 48–51).
In the 1990s, the police stop methods honed in the war on drugs

expanded into an effort to get guns off the
street (Sherman and Rogan 1995 ; Sherman,
Shaw, and Rogan 1995 ; Wilson 1994 ). In
“hot spots” policing, another initiative of
the 1990s, police were taught to focus their
proactive stops on high-crime locations
(Clarke and Weisburd 1994 ; Sherman,
Buerger, and Gartin 1989 ; Sherman, Gartin,

and Buerger 1989 ; Weisburd and Mazerolle 2000 ). Around the
same time, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration
(NHTSA) ( 1995 ) began encouraging police departments to
use traffic stops as an all-purpose crime-control tool. NHTSA ’ s
ongoing DDACTS program—Data-Driven Approaches to Crime
and Traffic Safety—is the current instantiation of the agency ’ s
long-standing support for using investigatory stops to suppress
crime (NHTSA 2014 ).

Institutionalized practices come
to be viewed not only as eff ec-
tive but as professionally right,

proper, and lawful.

172 Public Administration Review • March | April 2017

The U.S. Supreme Court has lent constitutional legitimacy to
the practice. Its landmark decision in Terry v. Ohio (1968) upheld
stop-and-frisks of pedestrians. In 1996, in another landmark
case, Whren v. U.S., the Court unanimously upheld the practice
of pretextual vehicle stops made for the purpose of questioning
a driver or searching a vehicle, so long as the officer has a legal
justification for stopping the vehicle. The Court ’ s only caveat was
that officers may not use a driver ’ s perceived race as the sole basis
for making an investigatory stop, a prohibition that is technically
important but practically meaningless as it is virtually impossible
to enforce. In the wake of Whren, the Court extended police
powers to stop and search vehicles in a series of key decisions
( Knowles v. Iowa, 525 U.S. 113 [1998]; Wyoming v. Houghton,
526 U.S. 295 [1999]; United States v. Arvizu, 534 U.S. 266
[2002]).

The legal and policy commitments favoring investigatory stops
are translated into practice through training, and this has become
systematic, enthusiastic, and detailed. In the authoritative and
widely used Tactics for Criminal Patrol, Charles Remsberg teaches
officers to use traffic stops “to maximize the number of citizen
contacts in vehicle stops during each shift and, through specific
investigative techniques, to explore the full arrest potential of
each” (1995, 9). The text guides officers through a series of
sequential steps that form what Remsberg ( 1995 , 9) called the
“Criminal Patrol Pyramid,” summarized in table 1 . As a federal
judge observed in Ligon v. City of New York (S.D.N.Y., Index No.
12 CIV 2274 [2013], 131), the New York police department ’ s
training in how to conduct stop-and-frisks “has taught officers
the following lesson: Stop and question first, develop reasonable
suspicion later.”

In sum, investigatory stops are an institutionalized practice.
Although not required by any common statute, many of the
country ’ s myriad local police departments have come to favor
this practice. It is taught and propagated by formal police
training, favored in educational materials, extolled by national
police professional associations and the shared norms of
professional policing, and constitutionally legitimated by the
Supreme Court. In fact, the shared professional commitment
to this practice has deepened in recent decades. Once maligned
as a trigger for the urban riots of the 1960s, by the 1990s the
investigatory stop was hailed by police leaders as a best practice,
as among professional policing ’ s most effective “crime-fighting
tools” (Georges 2000 , 53).

Table 1 Charles Remsberg ’ s “Criminal Patrol Pyramid”

Steps in the Investigatory Stop

1. Develop suspicion (or, typically, merely curiosity) about a driver.
2. Discover a legal justification to stop the driver (typically this justification is

some minor violation of the traffic laws or vehicle code) and make the stop.
3. Decide, after making the stop, whether to seek to search the vehicle based

on the close observation of the vehicle and its visible contents and dialogue
with the driver (and passengers). Officers use this dialogue to assess the
truthfulness of the driver.

4. Search the vehicle (“usually by consent”).
5. Discover contraband or weapons.
6. Make an arrest.
7. Seek “bonus benefits” (forfeiture of vehicle, cash, etc.; information about

additional criminal offenses).

How Institutional Policy Interacts with Psychological
Attitudes
Our data, as we will describe later, reveal that racial disparities in
who is stopped are concentrated in investigatory stops. There is no
significant racial disparity in other types of stops. This pattern of no
significant racial disparity in traffic safety stops but wide disparity in
investigatory stops suggests that racial disparities in policing cannot
be explained by individual officers’ choices alone; if so, we should
find racial disparities in both kinds of police activity. The problem
is thus an institutional phenomenon. Institutions are enacted by
individuals, however (Maynard-Moody and Musheno 2012 ). The
key question is how and why officers disproportionately select
African American drivers for investigatory stops but not for traffic
safety stops. Further, because the professional guidance regarding
investigatory stops is racially neutral, and because few, if any, police
departments are likely to direct their officers mainly to stop racial
minorities in investigatory stops, we need to explain how a policy
that is racially neutral in its formal terms nonetheless produces deep
racial discrimination in practice.

Our answer is that officers, when directed by their superiors to
stop people on the basis of suspicion of criminal activity, are likely
to make choices about whom to stop on the basis of implicit
racial stereotypes of black criminality. Department leaders are also
likely to choose where to deploy investigatory stops on the basis
of these stereotypes (Beckett, Nyrop, and Pfingst 2004 ; Beckett et
al. 2005 ). (It is also likely that some officers are deliberately racist
and intentionally choose to stop more African Americans, but our
argument is not dependent on this assumption.) Although overt
expression of racial bias arguably has declined since the 1960s
(Bobo and Fox 2003 ), implicit negative stereotypes of African
Americans persist. David Hamilton and Tina K. Trolier define
“stereotype” as a “cognitive structure that contains the perceiver ’ s
knowledge, beliefs, and expectations about human groups” (1986,
133). Patricia Devine observes that “ethnic attitudes and stereotypes
are part of the social heritage of a society and no one can escape
learning the prevailing attitudes and stereotypes assigned to major
ethnic groups” (1989, 5). The stereotypes of African Americans are
long-standing (Muhammad 2010 ) and generally negative: they are
seen, especially by whites, as lazy and prone to violence and crime
(Bobo 2004 ).

These individual attitudes on race matter. But our institutionalized
practices thesis provides a more comprehensive explanation of racial
disparities in police stops than the psychological explanation alone.
That is because our institutionalized practices thesis predicts that
racial disparities in police stops are likely to be concentrated in stops
in which officers decide whom to stop on the basis of inchoate
suspicion (rather than observed legal violations)—investigatory
stops. In these settings, officers make quick decisions about whom
to stop in a context of limited time and nonspecific information,
encouraging what psychologists call “automatic” mental processes
(Blair 2001 ; Devine 1986, 6; Greenwald et al. 2009 ). Unlike
“controlled” thinking processes, such as deliberate problem solving,
automatic processes are spontaneous and unintentional. They do
not require conscious effort and are activated by environmental
cues. Automatic or snap judgments are more likely to encourage
the expression of embedded racial stereotypes (Blair 2001 ; Devine
1986, 6; Greenwald et al. 2009 ). Even individuals who express

Beyond Profi ling: The Institutional Sources of Racial Disparities in Policing 173

little overt prejudice—and indeed may consider racial prejudice
morally wrong—may still respond on a gut level to racially biased
stereotypes (Brodish and Devine 2005 , 58; Lepore and Brown
1997 ). For example, implicit stereotypes may contribute directly to
such things as a police officer ’ s suspicion that a young black man
seems out of place or poses a risk, to a decision to stop him to ask
where he ’ s going, and so forth, even if the officer is professionally and
morally committed to unbiased policing.

In sum, our theory of the institutionalized practice of investigatory
stops predicts that racial disparities in police stops are likely to be
concentrated in stops made on the basis of suspicion to proactively
investigate the driver rather than on the basis of observed violation
of traffic safety laws.

Methods and Data
Our data were obtained from an original survey of drivers in the
Kansas City metropolitan area. We designed this survey to overcome
many of the methodological limitations of past studies of racial
disparities in police stops, and so it is useful to summarize past
studies’ methods before introducing our own. Most studies have
relied on administrative data on traffic citations or stop-and-frisk
reports. While these sources provide rich data about who is subjected
to stop-and-frisks or issued traffic citations, they are plagued by
what scholars call the “baseline problem,” or the absence of data
necessary to establish a baseline against which to compare rates of
stops or citations (Walker 2001 ; see also Ward 2002 ). As Gelman,
Fagan, and Kiss observe, “causal claims about discrimination would
require far more information about such baselines than the typical
administrative (observational) data sets can supply” (2007, 815).
For example, ideally, researchers would be able to compare stop rates
among white and black drivers not only against the number of white
and black drivers in the jurisdiction but also against a measure of
how much time these different groups spend driving, how much
they tend to violate traffic laws, and how much their vehicles have
violations of the vehicle code. Yet researchers generally lack data
on these measures and so are forced to rely for a baseline on simple
totals of African Americans and whites in a jurisdiction.

Official administrative data on vehicle stops have two other key
limitations. First, the vast majority of investigatory stops are never
recorded because they end in no official citation or warning (but
see Police Accountability Task Force 2016 for data on Chicago).
Administrative data thus are likely to yield significant underestimates
of the extent of racial disparities in stops. Second, administrative
data contain no information about how the person who was stopped
evaluated the stop or how the stop affected the individual ’ s attitude
toward the police.

An alternative method, a survey of drivers,
overcomes these limitations. The National
Institute of Justice has conducted several
national surveys of people ’ s contacts with the
police, and the data provide a somewhat fuller
set of control (baseline) variables (e.g., Engel
and Calnon 2004 ; Lundman and Kaufman
2003 ). Still, even these otherwise excellent
studies are confined to the rather limited
range of data gathered in these official surveys.

Our study exploited the advantages of the survey method but asked
a broader range of questions than in past surveys. Our questions
were informed by focus groups that we conducted with officers from
area departments. We asked drivers whether they had been stopped
by the police in the past year and, if so, how often; the reason given
for the stop; and whether a citation or warning was given and, if so,
what violations were charged. Importantly, we asked about stops
that yielded no citation as well as those that did. We also asked how
both the driver and the officer spoke and acted during the stop and
how the driver evaluated the stop and the drivers’ level of trust in
the police and in local government. We asked drivers to report their
race (both their self-identification and how their racial identity
would be perceived by somebody meeting them for the first time), 1
gender, age, and income. We also asked a host of questions that
provided data relevant to the development of a baseline (and to test
alternative nonracial explanations of who is stopped), among them
how much time the respondent spends driving per day and week,
the condition of their vehicle, the type of clothes they typically wear,
the extent to which they commit traffic violations, and so forth.
This wide range of questions allowed us to test for racial bias in who
is stopped and to assess the influence of police stops on people ’ s
attitudes in a much fuller and more theoretically satisfying manner
than in previous studies that did not include baseline measures and
attitudinal indicators.

We surveyed a stratified random sample of the driving population in
the Kansas City metropolitan area (spanning the Missouri–Kansas
border), yielding responses from 2,329 drivers (for a full description
of our survey methodology, see the methodological appendix in
Epp, Maynard-Moody, and Haider-Markel 2014 ). We followed up
the survey with in-depth interviews of a systematic subsample of
drivers who reported being stopped; the interviews gathered stories
of these stops in drivers’ own words and thus provided narrative
data that reveal how police stops are carried out from start to finish.

Evidence of the Discriminatory Effects of Investigatory
Stops
Our analysis rests on empirically distinguishing investigatory vehicle
stops from other stops. Our measure of investigatory stops is based
on drivers’ responses to a survey question about the justification the
officer gave for the stop upon approaching the driver. We classified
investigatory stops as those in which the officer provided a de
minimis justification for making the stop (e.g., driving two miles per
hour over the posted limit) or provided no justification. All other
stops we classify as traffic safety stops. These include, for example,
stops made speeding (at seven or more miles over the limit), driving
through a red light or stop sign, reckless driving, and suspicion of
driving under the influence. (For a more detailed discussion of how
we distinguished de minimis from other justifications, see Epp,

Maynard-Moody, and Haider-Markel 2014 ,
59–64.)

Racial Disparities in Who Is Stopped and
Searched
Our basic observation is that racial disparities
are concentrated in investigatory stops.
When the police are enforcing traffic safety
laws, such as stopping drivers for speeding at
seven or more miles per hour over the limit

Whatever the psychological and
cultural sources of racial dis-

parities are in police stops, these
forces do not express themselves
in traffi c safety enforcement, the
most common street-level activ-

ity of police offi cers.

174 Public Administration Review • March | April 2017

or running a red light, they are not significantly more likely to stop
black drivers (Epp, Maynard-Moody, and Haider-Markel 2014 ,
64–66). Whatever the psychological and cultural sources of racial
disparities are in police stops, these forces do not express themselves
in traffic safety enforcement, the most common street-level activity
of police officers .

When the police are carrying out investigatory
stops, they are significantly more likely to
stop black drivers. Controlling for a wide
range of alternative explanations, African
Americans were 2.7 times more likely than
whites to experience an investigatory stop (see
Epp, Maynard-Moody, and Haider-Markel 2014 , 65, table 3.1).
Simply put, investigatory stops of vehicles especially target minority
communities and people of color. Most whites, at least those over
age 25, never experience this form of police stop (176). Put another
way, in speeding stops, the most important influence on who is
stopped is how fast you drive. In investigatory stops, the most
important influence on who is stopped is not what you do but who
you are: young black men are by far the most likely to be stopped.

These observations are based on multivariate logistic regression
models that control for every conceivably significant alternative
explanation for who is stopped: the driver ’ s age, gender, and other
demographic characteristics; how much time the driver spends
driving; the vehicle ’ s make, model, year, and other characteristics;
the location of the stop; and so forth.

Likewise, inquisitive intrusions, for example, invasive questioning
and searches, are not randomly scattered across all types of stops.
They are concentrated in investigatory stops, and officers are much
more likely to pursue these intrusions of African Americans than
whites. Our data reveal that among drivers stopped for excessive
speeding, African Americans are not significantly more likely to
be questioned or searched. Intrusive questions and searches are
concentrated in investigatory stops, and in these stops, African
Americans are more than five times more likely than whites to be
searched (Epp, Maynard-Moody, and Haider-Markel 2014 , 81–84,
103–5). This disparity in searches occurs even though officers
are considerably less likely to discover contraband or weapons in
searches of African Americans than whites (105).

Harms to the Individuals Who Are Stopped
Our analysis revealed as well that these two types of stops have
profoundly different psychological and social consequences for
individuals and communities. The consequences of investigatory
stops are especially harmful, akin to the costs to individual, family,
and community caused by racial discrimination, as described by
Feagin and McKinney ( 2002 ). Our data show that while white
drivers’ experience of predictable, reasonable traffic safety stops
contributes to their perception of their equal status in a rule-governed
democracy, African Americans’ common experience of investigatory
stops contributes to their perception that they are not regarded by the
police as full and equal members of society (Epp, Maynard-Moody,
and Haider-Markel 2014 , 134–51). Investigatory stops, we find, are
significantly more likely to foster the perception that the police are
“out to get people like me,” and they render people significantly more
likely to carefully select the clothes they wear and avoid driving in

some areas for fear of how the police might treat them (145–46). For
example, two-thirds of African American men under age 30 (compared
with 40 percent of white men this age) say they avoid driving in some
areas of the city for fear of how the police may treat them. Even for
those ages 40 to 49, nearly half of African Americans of both sexes,

compared with 17 percent of white men and
8 percent of white women, say they avoid
some areas for fear of the police. Stunningly,
our data show that investigatory stops—but
not traffic safety stops—even make people less
comfortable with calling the police for help.
(An earlier study observed this effect for police
stops in general but, unlike our study, was not

able to distinguish the effects of traffic safety and investigatory stops;
see Gibson et al. 2010 ). These are deep psychological costs. They
contribute to the ongoing recreation of racial segregation.

Another cost of investigatory stops is deep, palpable fear of the
police. Investigatory stops, our data demonstrate, sometimes
produce dramatic escalations of tension between the officer and the
person stopped (Epp, Maynard-Moody, and Haider-Markel 2014 ,
74–92). These tensions reflect the fact that people who are subjected
to intrusive investigations on the pretext of a minor violation,
such as a burned-out taillight, think that this is unfair and unjust,
and they fear what the officer may do next. Thus, if an officer can
handcuff you and search your car when all you did was forget to fix
that little light, what is to stop him from doing far worse? Where is
this stop heading? People subjected to these stops told us of feeling
deeply fearful and resentful, of feeling “violated” (1). Police officers,
too, recognize that the people who are stopped and searched under
these circumstances are resentful and tense, and so officers are also
tense and ready to act forcefully to keep control of the interaction.
Our interviews reveal that both police officers and African
Americans who experience investigatory stops realize that escalations
are possible and try hard to avoid it.

Sometimes tensions escalate, however, confirming African American
drivers’ fear that these stops may spiral out of control into violence.
Billy, a black man, told us he once asked an officer, “Why are you
stopping me, because I ’ m a poor man in a ragged car?” Billy said
the officer responded by yelling, “Show me your hands, show me
your hands.” “He had his pistol pulled out,” Billy said, “and I didn ’ t
even turn my head, but I could see it out of the peripheral vision
of my eye, its barrel, and he pointed it right at my head, you know.
That was pretty frightening” (Epp, Maynard-Moody, and Haider-
Markel 2014 , 90–91). Even when the driver is let go from such an
experience with no physical harm, psychological pain endures.

Sometimes these inevitable tensions escalate to violence. In fact,
several of the most controversial police shootings since that of
Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, have occurred in precisely
such a context. These include the shootings of Walter Scott in
North Charleston, South Carolina; Samuel DuBose in Cincinnati,
Ohio; and Philando Castile in Minnesota, which occurred in vehicle
stops that bear all of the markings of investigatory stops and in
which tensions between the officer and the driver escalated (Apuzzo
and Williams 2015 ; Pérez-Peña 2015 ; Stahl 2016 ). The arrest of
Sandra Bland, who died in a Texas jail, likewise was made in the
midst of escalating tensions in such a stop (Lai et al. 2015 ).

Investigatory stops—but not
traffi c safety stops—even make
people less comfortable with
calling the police for help.

Beyond Profi ling: The Institutional Sources of Racial Disparities in Policing 175

Harms to Community and Society
The costs of investigatory stops include social and community
costs (Feagin and McKinney 2002 ). We have already noted how
investigatory stops contribute to the ongoing racial segregation of our
urban areas. Another key cost is to the police themselves: our data
reveal that investigatory stops powerfully erode trust in the police
among the people subjected to these stops. We measured trust in the
police with a range of standard questions concerning this trust as
well as questions unique to our survey. We combined these questions
into an index of trust in the police ( α = .91). Our data reveal that
the experience of an investigatory stop significantly erodes trust in
the police; in fact, the experience of such a stop erodes trust as much
as being stopped by an officer acting with extreme rudeness and
disrespect (put more technically, the effect of an investigatory stop is
as great as experiencing an average stop carried out by an officer in the
top 25th percentile on our scale of officer rudeness) (Epp, Maynard-
Moody, and Haider-Markel 2014 , 143–44). The experience of a traffic
safety stop, by contrast, has no significant effect on trust in the police.
This contrast is consistent with our thesis that the investigatory stop
is a distinct practice with distinct, deleterious effects, including the
loss of legitimacy of the police themselves. This erosion in trust in the
police surely is part of the explanation for the current crisis in policing.

One other social effect deserves brief mention. Our data suggest
that the investigatory stop shapes people ’ s perceptions of race and
racial identities. “Race,” of course, is a cultural construction (see,
e.g., American Anthropological Association 1998 )—and it is also
increasingly clear that some government policies and practices
contribute to racial divisions and identities (Gomez 2010 ). We
find that the experience of an investigatory stop among African
Americans is significantly associated with an increase in people ’ s
identification with, and loyalty to, African Americans as a group.
Strikingly, we find that the experience of an investigatory stop
has the opposite effect among whites, reducing their identification
with the white race. These results remain statistically significant
when controlling for a wide range of known influences on
racial identification. The effects of investigatory stops on racial
identification are consistent with a growing body of evidence (see,
e.g., Lerman and Weaver 2014 ) that the experience of intrusive
police stops is a defining element of what is called a sense of “linked
fate” among African Americans, or the belief that being black in
American society is a powerful source of shared experiences of
discrimination and solidarity (Dawson 1994 ).

Discussion
Investigatory stops are an institutionally supported practice that
causes harm both to the people who are stopped and to police
legitimacy. This practice sacrifices the liberty and dignity of large
numbers of innocent people who are disproportionately racial
minorities in pursuit of a small number who are dangerous or
carrying contraband (Harcourt 2007 ). The innocent victims of this
practice rightly feel that their status as free and equal members of
society has been diminished, and they resent this implication and
the police for enforcing this message. The victims of this practice
have learned from their experiences to distrust the police. Many
now are demanding fundamental police reforms.

Leaders of professional policing occasionally have acknowledged
these deeper truths and recognize how investigatory stops contribute

to the crisis they face. Thus, two police leaders (Milazzo and Hansen
1999 ) observed,

Despite the constitutionality of the practice [of investigatory
stops], motorists understand that they are being stopped for a
different reason than the one provided and are angered by the
inference needed to make the stop. The resulting anger could
escalate hostility and risk greater physical danger for both the
officer and motorist. The anger continues after the stop and
is shared within the motorist ’ s peer group. As more anecdotal
stories circulate about such stops, the long-term effect on race
relations must be balanced against the short-term effect on
drug enforcement. Police managers may legitimately weigh
race relations as more important than the potential arrest of a
drug user or street level dealer.

The Police Executives Research Forum (PERF) similarly has
acknowledged the harms caused by investigatory stops. A PERF-
published report on racially biased policing urged departments
to train officers away from using race as a key factor in deciding
whom to stop and search. Yet the report also acknowledged that
the “conventional police strategy,” that “numerous stops, searches,
citations, and arrests will yield reductions in crime, disorder and
accidents,” is itself a key source of racial disparities in stops (Fridell
et al. 2001 , 93). The report concluded, “oftentimes, intensive
criminal and traffic enforcement falls short of the desired effects,
and instead, only worsens the relationship between police and the
minority community” (93).

These observations, made more than 15 years ago, now seem
prescient. In the brief time since the police shooting of Michael
Brown in Ferguson, a broad movement for police reform has
revealed how little many members of our society trust that the
police are engaged in fair and impartial law enforcement. This
perception is not simply a legacy of the past. Our data demonstrate
that investigatory police stops contribute to it daily: investigatory
stops fuel distrust in the police.

The problem, put simply, is not only the occasional errant, racist
officer who violates police policy and training but the “best practice”
of investigatory stops itself. This practice is deeply institutionalized
in contemporary policing. The police have not acted alone in
developing this policy, however. Support for the so-called war on
crime is long-standing and shared across the political spectrum
(Simon 2007 ). Americans ask our police departments to reduce
crime. Professional policing responded by developing “proactive”
crime-fighting tactics, chief among them the investigatory stop.
To those favoring investigatory stops, the experience of such a stop
seems a minor inconvenience for the innocent, a fair price to pay for
getting drugs and guns off the streets.

The evidence that investigatory stops help fight crime is surprisingly
weak. Although an old study suggested that investigatory stops
might help reduce crime (Sherman and Rogan 1995 ; Sherman,
Shaw, and Rogan 1995 ), more recent studies conclude that there
is no clear evidence that investigatory stops help reduce crime (see,
e.g., Cohen and Ludwig 2003 ; Koper and Mayo-Wilson 2006 ;
McGarrell et al. 2001 ; Zimring 2011 ). Supporters of investigatory
stops seem unaware of this fact.

176 Public Administration Review • March | April 2017

Nor do they recognize the considerable costs of investigatory stops
to individual dignity, the community and police–community
relations. Scattershot investigatory stops, even if ostensibly focused
on those who look suspicious, mainly target innocent community
residents for highly invasive intrusions. Many people who
experience these stops describe them as akin to “incarcerations.”
Like people everywhere, they appreciate police protection, but they
also value fair treatment and freedom from arbitrary intrusion: they,
like everyone, resent being treated like criminals. Stopped in this
way, people begin to avoid driving in some areas for fear of how the
police may treat them; they begin to fear calling the police for help
and therefore decrease the likelihood of cooperation with police.
Investigatory stops thus erode individuals’ basic liberties and dignity.
These harms extend to the police and society itself. Investigatory
stops erode the trust in police so necessary for police legitimacy.
They also diminish community empowerment (Rosenbaum 2006 )
and what Robert Sampson and Stephen Raudenbush (1999) call
“collective efficacy,” the fundamental community social asset that
helps to reduce crime. Investigatory stops may yield some seizures
of drugs and guns and a few arrests of criminals, but the long-term
cost in the erosion of trust between the police and community
reduces the ability of the police and residents to prevent and solve
crime over the longer term.

Consider the social and community costs of erosion in the
willingness of people to call the police for help, one of the effects of
experiencing an investigatory police stop. What options are open to
somebody who has been the victim of a crime but who distrusts the
police and so is unwilling to call them for help? Such a person may
decide to do nothing and simply try to go on with life as best he (or
she) can after the crime. Or he may decide to take matters into his
own hands and seek retribution (Gibson et al. 2010 ). Both represent
fundamental violations of the equal protection of the law. They also
contribute to more crime, further erosion of
lawful norms, and continuing degradation
of the quality of life in some communities.
In these ways, investigatory police stops are
deeply counterproductive.

What, then, is to be done? Ending investigatory stops, except
when compellingly justified by clear and particular cause,
would contribute directly to improved police–community
relations. The leading approaches to police reform in the wake
of Ferguson, as we noted earlier, focus on better training and
control of individual officers, especially training to improve
officer respectfulness. Our data confirm that drivers evaluate
stops more positively the more the officer is polite and respectful.
But our data also demonstrate that this is hardly enough. African
American drivers commonly experience investigatory stops and
resent the practice; our data show that they evaluate these stops
more negatively than traffic safety stops no matter how polite
and respectful is the officer. In fact, among these drivers the
corrosive effect of an investigatory stop (compared with a traffic
safety stop) on a driver ’ s evaluation of the stop is as substantial
as the effect of being stopped by an officer whose behavior is at
the 25th percentile (compared with the 75th percentile) on our
scale of officer politeness/impoliteness (Epp, Maynard-Moody,
and Haider-Markel 2014 , 129–33). Put simply, investigatory
stops are as poisonous to drivers’ evaluations of the stop as being

stopped by a deeply rude and disrespectful officer. Strikingly,
African Americans who experience a traffic safety stop by a polite
officer evaluate the experience no differently than a white driver
in a similar stop. The larger lesson is clear: to improve African
Americans’ perceptions of the police, rein in the practice of
investigatory stops.

Steps in this direction would include requiring officers to record and
report the race, gender, and age of all persons stopped, including
stops in which no warning or citation is issued. Currently, many
investigatory stops are not recorded. This lack of reporting limits
the capacity of command-level officers to monitor the actions of
their officers and look for patterns of racial disparity. It also limits
oversight by city managers and elected officials. Additionally,
surveys of city residents regarding satisfaction with police services
should include questions about experiences in police stops,
including stops for minor violations.

Conclusion
When confronted with new evidence of racial disparities in
police stops, most discussions turn, yet again, to denials that
it is a widespread problem or claims that it is the product of a
few bad apples. In fact, as our research demonstrates, the unjust
disparities in police stops are widespread and the result of deeply
institutionalized practices that are supported by law and policy
and refined and engrained by training and socialization. Although
formally color blind, investigatory stops encourage the expression
of powerful, deeply ingrained negative stereotypes of black and
brown Americans. This police practice thus actively recreates
our society ’ s racial divide. It reconstructs the meaning of rights,
citizenship, and race in contemporary America, contributing to
racial inequality rather than equality (Ward and Rivera 2014 ).

Reforming investigatory stops will not be
easy. The practice is viewed by many in
policing not as a problem but as a good
thing. In many places, doing investigatory
stops is part of what it means to be a good

cop. Still, although institutionalized practices resist change they
are not unchangeable. If the professional leaders of our cities and
police departments are willing to learn about the immense costs of
the investigatory stop practice, and are willing to confront the fact
that it is this practice, and not only the actions of a few bad apples,
that has so eroded public support for the police, then the door may
open to real institutional reform. Police agencies should replace
this “scattershot, stop-lots-of-people-in-the hope-of-catching-a-
few” practice (Forman and Stutz 2012 ) with police–community
collaboration. The leadership of American policing should recognize
that widespread investigatory stops are counterproductive and
morally repugnant. They should define this institutionalized
practice as unprofessional and train and evaluate officers in
alternative, community-based approaches.

Acknowledgments
This article is based on research that was made possible by a grant
from the National Science Foundation (SES-0214199). Any
opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed
in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily
reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

Investigatory police stops are
deeply counterproductive.

Beyond Profi ling: The Institutional Sources of Racial Disparities in Policing 177

Note
1 . For each of these questions, we allowed drivers to select more than one of the

standard ethnoracial categories. Virtually all drivers selected one primary racial
category, and there was extremely little difference between drivers’ self-
identification and their estimate of another person ’ s first impression of their
racial identity. In the present analysis, we use the self-identification measure.

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