Under a 2000 law, Missouri law enforcement agencies report traffic stop data to the Attorney General who generates the Vehicle Stops Report. The VSR documents that black drivers have been stopped at an increasing disproportion to white drivers. In 2017, black drivers were stopped at a rate 1.85 times the rate for white drivers. In 2018, the disproportion rose to 1.91. Officer actions can be caused by many factors other than discrimination, so the disproportion does not prove discrimination, but the disproportion is high enough to call for a closer examination of the reasons officers make stops and take other actions.
A weakness of the VSR is that it uses a jurisdiction's census data to estimate group driver proportions, but individual often cross jurisdiction boundaries and have varying access to vehicles so the estimates--the VSR's stop benchmarks--are often flawed and the VSR provides no way to substitute better ones. This site discusses ways to document more reliable benchmarks.
The VSR includes data on the actions officers take after a stop has occurred, but it presents no disproportions for these. Disproportions in rates for post-stop actions can use stops as their benchmarks-- for instance, black consent searches per black stops. These rates and disproportions involve no estimates, just the data as reported by agencies. This site presents disproportions for all post-stop situations documented by the VSR.
Consent Searches are a good indicator of officer performance because officers are not required to act on probable cause or even reasonable suspicion so they can be distracted by racial stereotypes. In 2001, black drivers were subjected to consent searches at a rate 24% higher than the white rate. by 2009 the disproportion had risen to 45%. It began to fall in 2015. In 2017 is was 5%, near equity, and in 2018 1.07, only slightly higher. This site examines trends such as this one.
Updated July 2018