Thread by @samswey

The Bureau of Justice Statistics estimates 53 million people had contact with police nationwide in 2015. This report is key to understanding how to reduce encounters with police overall. A thread. bjs.gov/content/pub/pd…

15% of all police contacts (8M/year) were in response to car crashes. The rest of the contacts were evenly split between people who called police and people who were stopped by police. White people had *more* contact with police overall - mainly because they called police more.

Here’s a breakdown of who called/initiated contact with police. White people were more likely to call police to report a possible crime, to report medical emergency/situations that wasn’t a crime, and to seek help for another reason. But who gets stopped by police more...

When we look at who’s being stopped by police, the data shows Black people were more likely to be stopped by police in both traffic and street stops and also more likely to be arrested than white people. But look at the number of traffic stops here compared to other stops...

The data shows that traffic stops are *by far* the most frequent type of police-initiated contact in America, across all demographics. 85% of people recently stopped by police were either drivers or passengers in a traffic stop. This is huge.

The data shows that removing armed police from traffic enforcement could have a huge impact on reducing police contact/policing overall. Berkeley is moving in that direction, other cities should follow. nypost.com/2020/07/16/ber…