New insights into RPD traffic stops

A new working paper by the Center for Public Safety Initiatives at Rochester Institute of Technology shows a decline in the number of traffic stops by the Rochester Police Department.

Since a spike in 2017 with 8,037 traffic stops, the total has fallen nearly every year. The 2,107 total stops in 2023, the lowest number in the time frame studied (2015 to 2023), represents a 74 percent decline from the peak.

While the paper notes that the decline could be attributed to COVID-related policing changes, the falling numbers persist past the pandemic, suggesting a longer-term trend.

“The sharp decline observed in 2020 and 2021 can likely be attributed to the COVID-19 pandemic, which resulted in fewer vehicles on the road and reduced law enforcement activities,” the paper states. “(Post-pandemic totals) implies that, despite a small rise after the pandemic, the main trend of decreasing traffic stops continued.”

Traffic stops have become a particular point of focus in recent years in the conversation about public safety equity and distrust of law enforcement. Scrutiny is often focused on the combination of financial penalties, the potential for police violence, and pretextual stops, or an effort to uncover evidence of a serious crime for which police lack reasonable suspicion.

Last summer, traffic stops were in the public eye due to two high-profile incidents: one involving Monroe County District Attorney Sandra Doorley and the other involving Rochester resident Marvin Taylor.

Doorley was ultimately given a speeding ticket for an incident in which she ignored attempts by police to pull her over and berated an officer after she returned to her Webster home. Onondaga County District Attorney William Fitzpatrick declined to authorize any further charges after reviewing the incident.

By contrast, Taylor, a 22-year-old Black man, leveled accusations of police brutality against RPD after a traffic stop resulted in him being placed in handcuffs. Police said he refused to comply with directions to roll down his windows, leading them to break the windows and pull him from the vehicle.

“Situations, like these, in which a motorist refuses a reasonable direction to lower the windows creates an unsafe situation for everyone involved,” RPD chief David Smith said in a statement at the time. “Cooperation from the motorist would easily have prevented this incident from escalating.”

Taylor was ticketed for obstruction of governmental administration, failure to give an appropriate turn signal and operating a motor vehicle without a valid inspection certificate.

CPSI found that traffic stops it studied were weighted toward men, with 63 percent of all stops over eight years for male drivers. This trend spiked to a ratio of 2:1 in 2023, highest in the recorded data.

“The significant difference suggests that there may be underlying factors influencing the likelihood of being stopped based on one’s sex,” the paper notes. “These disparities may

reflect differential enforcement, or differential driving behaviors among males.”

Most traffic stops across this period occurred due to speeding (32 percent), or an uninspected (24 percent), or unregistered (23 percent) vehicle.

Violations related to inadequate or broken lights (10 percent), nontransparent windows (5 percent) and long-term uninspected vehicles (1.8 percent) were less common. However, the report notes that some of these issues reflect ongoing maintenance and legal compliance concerns.

“Importantly, drivers with lower incomes are more likely to face difficulty with such maintenance costs,” the paper states.

One large type of data not collected by RPD is a driver’s race or ethnicity. CPSI recommends that the police begin collecting that data to aid efforts to address racial disparities in police stops. 

For example, a 2023 study by the New York City Civil Liberties Union found that Black and Latinx drivers were disproportionately stopped, accounting for 32 and 29 percent of traffic stops throughout that year.  Last year, the How Many Stops Act, which was passed over a veto by Mayor Eric Adams, went into effect in New York City. The law mandates that police officers collect the race of people they stop for questioning.

Although the state does not mandate it, there is nothing precluding the city of Rochester from doing so. RPD has said its software does not allow for a race field on traffic tickets in the past. However, the State Police said that, while that field is switched off by default, it can be switched on by any police department.

CPSI also recommends that RPD record latitude and longitude data, similar to how the department operates with shooting data. Random checks of a subset of data will improve the data collection process as well.

This aligns with two policy recommendations from the Rochester Police Accountability Board, delivered to the RPD in May 2023. 

The first recommended the creation of a downloadable dataset on traffic stops that would include incident-level information similar to California’s Racial and Identity Profiling Advisory program. (The RIPA program records race and ethnic identity)

This recommendation was declined in a response from Smith the following month.

“Mirroring the RIPA data collection program is a massive undertaking that would extend well past the RPD,” the response reads.

A second PAB recommendation determined that the department’s open data portal should include information on traffic and pedestrian stops (which it still lacks), as well as complaints about police misconduct, instances of officers shooting firearms, use of force, arrests and calls for service.

In response to this recommendation, Smith said a partnership between the RPD and data collection organization Measures for Justice would aid the modernization and public release of these types of records.

MFJ’s data will include some traffic stops, calls for service, crimes reported, use of force, overtime work, officer turnover and line of duty deaths, the nonprofit says.

“Improving data collection and transparency in traffic stop practices can enhance accountability and build trust between the Rochester Police Department and the community. Accurate data is critical for addressing concerns about biased policing and ensuring equitable treatment of all citizens,” the CPSI paper states.

Jacob Schermerhorn is a Rochester Beacon contributing writer and data journalist. 

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