Tyrone N. Butts
APE Reporter
52
White women more likely ticketed when pulled over
Ticket in hand, Richard Taylor stood outside Nashville traffic court and spoke his mind about who he thinks gets a ticket and who gets off with a warning when stopped by police.
Most likely to get a ticket?
''Young black men,'' said Taylor, 39, an African-American.
And most likely to get a warning?
''Old white people,'' he said.
But a Tennessean analysis of Metro police traffic stop data from 2003 shows that perception is not true.
According to the da
a, white women were most likely to get ticketed when pulled over by police --93.3% of the time. By comparison, black men were ticketed 88.2% of the time they were stopped.
The newspaper's analysi
s c
mpared only the percentage of stops in which motorists were ticketed "
"� not the overall numbers of tickets given to different demographic groups. Of 126,000 stops last year, motorists were ticketed 91% of the time.
The ticketing rates do not vary greatly for different racial and gender groups --they were within 6 percentage points of each other.
''Those numbers seem to indicate balanced enforcement,'' said Jack McDevitt, associate dean of College of Criminal Justice at Northeastern University in Massachusetts. ''That's what we're all looking for.''
****************
Looks like the brothers will have to find a new whine.
T.N.B.
White women more likely ticketed when pulled over
Ticket in hand, Richard Taylor stood outside Nashville traffic court and spoke his mind about who he thinks gets a ticket and who gets off with a warning when stopped by police.
Most likely to get a ticket?
''Young black men,'' said Taylor, 39, an African-American.
And most likely to get a warning?
''Old white people,'' he said.
But a Tennessean analysis of Metro police traffic stop data from 2003 shows that perception is not true.
According to the da
a, white women were most likely to get ticketed when pulled over by police --93.3% of the time. By comparison, black men were ticketed 88.2% of the time they were stopped.
The newspaper's analysi
s c
mpared only the percentage of stops in which motorists were ticketed "
"� not the overall numbers of tickets given to different demographic groups. Of 126,000 stops last year, motorists were ticketed 91% of the time.
The ticketing rates do not vary greatly for different racial and gender groups --they were within 6 percentage points of each other.
''Those numbers seem to indicate balanced enforcement,'' said Jack McDevitt, associate dean of College of Criminal Justice at Northeastern University in Massachusetts. ''That's what we're all looking for.''
****************
Looks like the brothers will have to find a new whine.
T.N.B.