Black motorists in Missouri were 69 percent more likely than whites to be stopped by Missouri police in 2010 — a tiny decrease in the disparity from 2009, say data from Attorney General Chris Koster reported by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. The report analyzed more than 1.6 million stops by 630 police agencies statewide. Missouri law has required the compilation of such information since 2000, but its breakdown by jurisdiction has long been discounted by critics who say it mistakenly presumes that the races of drivers in a particular community are proportionate to the races of its driving-age population.
Blacks were about 61 percent over-represented in state traffic-stop figures, compared with their population. Whites were about 5 percent under-represented, Hispanics about 22 percent, Asians about 46 percent and American Indians about 84 percent. Koster called it a “disturbing trend” that blacks were stopped 27 percent more often than their population would suggest in 2000 and 61 percent more often in 2010. That was down from 62 percent the year before. St. Louis police stopped blacks 111 percent more often than whites, based on the population. That’s up from 87 percent in 2010 and 7 percent in 2000.