By Debby Woodin

dwoodin@joplinglobe.com

Joplin’s police chief, Lane Roberts, invited members of the NAACP on Thursday night to encourage people to call him or a police commander if someone feels unjustly stopped by police.

The chief addressed about a dozen members of the group at the Joplin Service Center, 110 Main St., about the Police Department’s racial profiling numbers.

All law-enforcement agencies in the state are expected to file yearly reports with the attorney general’s office, reporting the number of stops officers make, how many searches are done, how many searches result in the seizure of contraband, and the race of the those involved.

Racial profiling

The purpose of collecting and analyzing the information is to shed light on how serious racial profiling is across the state, and so that people can find out how likely it is that their local law-enforcement agency is conducting racially motivated stops.

“We went the right direction last year,” Roberts told the group. “We want to keep that going on.”

But that does not mean the disparity rate — or the likelihood of racial profiling — is greatly reduced. Joplin’s index follows a statewide trend of being on the increase over a period of years. The reports do show an increase in stops, though. That could be contributing to the rate.

The chief said he wanted the residents to know that he acknowledges work needs to be done on the disparity index, “but we’re making progress.”

“I want to create some level of confidence that things are getting better or will with their help.”

Joplin’s report shows that the department’s disparity index, or a rating of its stops weighted by the population of minorities, is hovering at about the same level as the past several years.

It also shows that blacks are twice as likely as whites to be searched. The rate of contraband found, though, corresponds with the ratio of searches.

Hispanics are a lot less likely to be stopped than whites or blacks, but more likely to be searched and less likely to have contraband than whites, the report suggests.

Statewide reports