As part of an ongoing effort to "demonstrate more transparency to the community," the Department of Public Safety will now release field stop data reports biannually, Chief of Police and Director of Public Safety Mark Porter told The Herald. The current report, published on the department's Web site in November, covers field stops conducted between January and October of this year.
The report is part of the department's Field Stop Initiative, an effort to analyze, among other variables, the racial and gender makeup of those stopped by DPS.
Field stops are interviews conducted by DPS officers and reported to the department. Though usually following calls to DPS, officers sometimes initiate such situations.
During the ten-month period, DPS conducted 101 stops with a total of 161 people. Thirty-three of the individuals were Brown students - of these, 25 were white and eight were Asian. One of these 33 students was also identified as ethnically Hispanic. Seven of the student stops were initiated by DPS - of these, six were white males and one was a white female.
Overall, 128 others, non-Brown students were stopped. Of these, 108 were white, 18 were black and two were Asian. Thirteen of these individuals were also identified as ethnically Hispanic. During this time period, 15,924 calls were made to DPS, and 0.6 percent of calls resulted in stops.
DPS began collecting information on the race and gender of persons stopped in 2005 "for internal review purposes," Lieutenant Bruce Holt told The Herald. The report was made public "in response to concerns about negative community perceptions about the department," Holt said.
Porter added that recommendations from the University's Public Safety Oversight Committee influenced the decision to publish the information online.
"We're hoping to gain more information about the types of stops being conducted and the results of those stops," as part of "ongoing efforts to enhance DPS integrity and transparency," Holt said.
Unlike the 2006 report, the recent data includes the distribution of stops across times of day, days of the week and months. Most stops occur between 1 a.m. and 3 a.m. and are distributed evenly across the week with the exception of Wednesday nights, when fewer stops are reported. April was the month with the most stops. And stops were noticeably higher late last semester and at the beginning of this semester.
Last year's report was followed by analysis by the Office of Institutional Diversity, which put the field stop data in perspective of the racial makeup of the Brown and Providence communities. According to the 2006 analysis, the relative infrequency of stops was "somewhat in contradiction to recent claims of excessive field stops." Last year's analysis, however, cites "current community tensions" and suggests "we should think about ways to perform checks on the data collection process." A similar analysis is expected for this year's data and, like last year's, will be made available online, Holt said, likely at the beginning of 2008.
