Syracuse, N.Y. -- For nearly half of a Wednesday afternoon meeting, Police Chief Kenton Buckner and members of the Syracuse Common Council sparred over data that shows Buckner’s officers pull over Black people at a rate seven times higher than white people.
Buckner argued the disparities were more a reflection of where the department most polices, who commits crimes and who is often the victim of a crime.
Councilors, particularly councilor Ronnie White, argued that is irrelevant to the disparity because so few stops ended with a criminal charge and that a higher percentage of stops of white people ended with one.
The debate came after an analysis of Syracuse police traffic stop data by Syracuse.com | The Post-Standard that showed the disparity in the rates of traffic stops.
From April through June, Black drivers made up 79 percent of traffic stops by the police department. Syracuse is about 30 percent Black.
The syracuse.com | The Post-Standard analysis also found:
- Police stop 12.2 Black men for every 100 Black men in the city over the course of a year. That’s a rate 6.9 times higher than white men.
- Police stop 3.3 Black women for every 100 Black women in the city over the course of a year. That’s a rate 6.7 times higher than white women.
- Despite disproportionately stopping Black people more, a higher percentage of stops of white people ended with a criminal charge: 26.1% of stops of white people ended with a criminal charge compared to 19.1% of stops of Black people.
The city’s new Right to Know law mandated that the police department release the stop-by-stop data on the city’s website. In all, the department included data from 1,081 stops during three months, April to June 2021. The data is largely traffic stops, but includes some other interactions with the public.
Buckner made an 11-slide presentation that he handed out to councilors and attendees to justify the disparity.
He spent 40 minutes arguing that the department polices more in neighborhoods where there is more crime --often neighborhoods where Black people live -- and included data that showed most victims and suspects of crime are Black.
His presentation also included the 12 areas the department mostly aggressively polices, including nine in the Southwest side of the city. Fifty-five percent of those 12 areas were made up of Black people.
“We are declaring that there are certain sections of our city that are disproportionately victims of crimes and that they were suspects of crimes,” Buckner said.
“And that justifies what amounts to a stop-and-frisk policy in these areas?” Syracuse Common Councilor Ronnie White replied.
“I don’t think you’ve heard us say anything about a stop-and-frisk policy, however it is a legal -- you are an attorney, sir -- it’s a legal thing that’s available. It’s an ugly truth that we come into contact, more so, with people of color,” Buckner said.
Buckner said that some of the gap in how often people are criminally charged after traffic stops can be explained by the fact that people who live in the areas the department aggressively polices are often around crime and are unintentionally suspected of being involved in the crime that happens.
In an interview after the session finished, White said Buckner was “fear mongering” to justify the data.
White, who helped write the Right to Know law for the council, said he would consider amending the law to force more data reporting around which officers are stopping drivers to increase oversight.
He said the data showed that officers are using pretext stops, a tactic officers use across the country, which happens when an officer pulls over a driver for a minor infraction to look for other, more serious crimes.
Syracuse police have used pretext stops in the past. A now-disbanded gun recovery unit used traffic stops in an attempt to get guns out of shooters’ hands but far more often ticketed drivers for misdemeanors and minor traffic violations.
White has argued in the past that pretext stops are “fishing expeditions” and waste officers time.
“Is it the correct practice for our police officers to be doing?” White said of pretext stops.
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