Fatally Flawed and Unfit For Purpose

 These comments are largely based on the Final RIPA Report that was made available on December 31, 2021. The close to 300 pages was supplemented or should have been supplemented by a Dashboard. The link to the Dashboard did not work. After 40 days and many communications later, the Dashboard’s contents were “incrementally” moved to where they may be accessed. The Dashboards are unlike what most persons are used to: they conceal, rather than disclose. But most important, that which they rarely do disclose is often wrong. Regrets!

If you like fiction, you will have liked the 2022 RIPA Stop Data Report, advice of which may have appeared in your mailbox two months ago.  If you like your fiction to feature happy talk, you will be delighted with the notification email and the report itself. For while the CA-DOJ propagandizes the diminution in stops, it fails to mention that almost all adverse disparities, especially those that threaten life and limb, of Black and Brown people, disproportionately, increased. Most have long trended upward for Blacks and Hispanics, Blacks especially (See the spikes around the time of the Chauvin verdict.) It is not so much that the Report shall be in error, although errors abound, it is more that gross omissions and outright nonsense exist aplenty. The only possible reason for them is concealment; an absence of “transparency”, in its higher and often-used LEA meaning.  Most egregious however, is the fabrication of Use-of-Force results for Blacks (2.6 to Whites in the Final Report.) There is no support for the number, not even when doubled. Indeed, the CHP may have the lowest overall Use-of-Force results, in the state, and its Use-of-Force disparity is above 3.3. Furthermore, the 2.6 disparity is not a value that is supported by analyses done by others (it is not close) especially those done by some who appear to be ”partners” of the  CA-DOJ”; CPE, for example.

We are supposed to be working under this definition:

“Racial or identity profiling,” for purposes of this section, is the consideration of, or reliance on, to any degree, actual or perceived race, color, ethnicity, national origin, age, religion, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, or mental or physical disability in deciding which persons to subject to a stop or in deciding upon the scope or substance of law enforcement activities following a stop, except that an officer may consider or rely on characteristics listed in a specific suspect description. 

In addition to the controlling definition, we have enacting regulations that contain representations that bind the California Department of Justice. In order to meet its mandate to ferret-out; to propose legislative changes, and, if need be (needs have been) to pursue legal action to put an end to the crime of Racial Profiling, the CA-DOJ must have “reasonably representative” data. The CA-DOJ has unscrupulously avoided having such data, and has, this year, excelled itself in that avoidance. The CA-DOJ has been equally assiduous in the avoidance of the disclosure of the substantial shortcomings in the data that it does have. And -to avoid the “data is not perfect” defense-  I give one example, the primary example. The Office of Inspector General for the LAPD has asserted that every stop must be documented by a Field Interview. There are around 1.55 million stop records for the LAPD, but only around 550,000 Field Interviews have been reported for that department. I put it to you that data of 8.6 million reported records that has more than a million elements, or entireties missing, is severely impaired; perhaps mortally wounded; perhaps fatally flawed. The failure to report substantial numbers of these interactions, interactions that breed other actions, some quite adverse, is not peculiar to the LAPD. Indeed, similar results are documented for the San Diego Sheriff’s Office and the San Diego Police Department. In the San Diego Sheriff’s office, they “failed” to report Field Interviews of Blacks at almost twice the rate that they “failed” to report Field Interviews for Whites. The Sacramento P.D.; a rogue organization that is quasi-supervised, by the CA-DOJ, has similarly atrocious reporting performance.

I put it to you that the above-mentioned items deserve specific mention; more that the few, the deeply embedded and almost hidden, sentences that the RIPA 2022 report has devoted to the LAPD’s quite severe failures; failures that have caused the AG to forbid the LAPD’s use of the Cal-Gang Database (LEAs in the Fresno “node”-- whatever that means-- had a somewhat similar fate.) The Cal-Gang Database is the working repository of gang-related Field Interview records, It is a database that has been used to destroy the futures of young Blacks and Browns. Doubtless more than a million is a very big number, it is more than 20% of the data-entirety. All of this could have been avoided, but for arrogance and a desire to maintain the status quo; a failure to implement audits and Data Integrity Checks.

The Draft RIPA Report is replete with discriminatory policing results, but it is Uses-of-Force that are the sum of all fears. They are the focus of what is generically called “police brutality”. They grab you by the throat. OIG for the LAPD, Oakland Police Department, The CA-DOJ itself, in its capacity as a quasi-supervisor of the SPD, and my own analysis of SDPD data has disclosed severe underreporting of these fear-inducing items. I have not noticed mention of easily verifiable underreported Uses-of-force; not in RIPA reports, nor in reports from “partners” to LEAs or of the CA-DOJ. But to top it all, the CA-DOJ has reported a Use-of-Force disparity that has no visible means of support. The value that appears in the Final RIPA Report (2.6), if doubled, would be far too low. The Use-of-Force disparity, as appears in the RIPA Report seems to be pure fabrication. The massive under-representation, i.e. misrepresentation makes it dangerous. As a consequence, The RIPA Report, for 2022, is Fatally Flawed and Unsuited for Purpose. It is a Public Safety Hazard, as well as a Public Health Hazard, because any remedy that is fashioned using the 2022 RIPA Board’s report shall be inadequately calibrated, due to faulty or false data and dirty-data tricks.

The Data Analysis for The Wave One, Wave Two and other early adopters is for about 8.8 million persons stopped in the period July 1, 2018-September 30, 2021. It is not known if this data is “reasonably representative.” Given what is written above, it is certain that the data is neither “reasonably reliable nor complete.”, for according to various Departmental audits, RIPA reported data is severely incomplete. Despite its faults, it must be said that the overall data is content rich; even though some of it suffers from the same illegal withholding of disclosable fields; fields essential for the evaluation and assessment of Bias by Proxy, fields essential to the validation of the bogus Veil of Darkness” Hypothesis that is so beloved by the CA-DOJ and is often called “The Gold Standard.” Quackery is not golden, and the foundation upon which VOD darkness relies was disproven by The US Department of Commerce, decades ago. In the face of all this, the CA-DOJ withholds critically necessary data, using lies as excuses. That the California Supreme Court requires the CA-DOJ to anonymize data and thus to overcome the basis for data embargo (the result of CA-DOJ Data Integrity checking blunders. See Article 6. Audits and Validation, Sec. 999.229) at its costs, is of no impression on the CA-DOJ.

Here too, it may be said that CA-DOJ’s epic failure at auditing and at rudimentary data integrity checks make a mockery of Sec 999.29. The AB943 Team’s consequential violations of the Public Records Act, from which adverse inferences must be drawn, establishes that the RIPA regime is fatally flawed and unfit for purpose, as implemented and administered. 

The CA-DOJ has long known of the nature of the propensity for fudging data by many LEAs. Rather than address the problem, the CA-DOJ encourages fudging, and not only by its horrible example, but by its claim of verifying the integrity of data; something that its performance demonstrates it does not do, and something a CJIS manager somewhat-correctly asserted, many years ago, it cannot do. Yet CA-DOJ continues to falsely assure the public that it can, and that it has.

Veil of Darkness

I would be remiss were I not to mention, in detail, the “Veil of Darkness” darkness hypothesis: a supposition or proposed explanation made on the basis of limited evidence as a starting point for further investigation. Even though the hypothesis, this time, as it did last time, points to discriminatory conduct, it is foundationally flawed. Flawed because it relies on the false notion that all ethnicities are subject to police predation during the same hours. That is untrue and has been documented to be untrue for more than 20 years. Facts further driven home by the Covid-19 pandemic. Essential workers, predominantly Black and Hispanic, work odd hours. Accordingly, the Veil Of Darkness hypothesis is fatally flawed and unfit for purpose too. We cannot assume as does the progenitors of the Veil of darkness, Groger and Ridgeway, “that racial differences in traffic patterns, driving behavior, and exposure to law enforcement do not vary between daylight and darkness”[7, because we know the assumption to be false. Blacks and Hispanics are more prone to police predation during the dark because that is when they are more likely to be out and about than others. In other words, there is not even a modicum of evidence that supports the root supposition. Veil Of Darkness, an often-used opportunity to put thumbs on the scale, should have been a non-starter.

I, too, have analyzed the flawed data, but my analysis is of all available RIPA data since July 1,2018, the whole body of work, around 8.8 million records, that have been reported and made available in the RIPA era. I have made a simplified and filterable Dashboard/Report that is available here.

Despite the arguably fatal flaws mentioned above, it cannot be said that RIPA data is not “reasonably representative.” Indeed, since salutary data is never hidden, we must conclude that disparities are no better than what the data shows. 

Computation Methodologies

My analysis/report uses two distinct methodologies for computing disparities. The first produces lower disparities for groups that have a disproportionate abundance of stops that result in No Action. Its advantage is that it exposes inverse results that may point to discrimination, Citations for example. Because so many Blacks are stopped for no reason (Result of stop = None) I try to avoid this method.

1. The computations upon which these recommendations are based, is the number of persons of a given race/ethnicity subjected to an activity, divided by the total number of persons stopped.

2. The alternate methodology uses percentages for each race/ethnicity for each Reason, Result or Action and compares those results to population presence for each such group

For example, Center for Policing Equity explains its computation method for Use-of-Force, more or less, as follows:

CPE measures a use of force incident as one occasion in which force is used against a person, regardless of the number of officers, force types, or applications of force involved in the incident. If more than one person had force used upon them at the same time, each person who was subjected to force is counted as a separate incident. CPE uses city-level demographic data (from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey 5- year estimates) as the most straightforward and complete representation of the local community.

The CPE Description is a close approximation of the second method. It is my preferred method.

Key findings for the California’s Stop Data include:

• Black people comprise around 8 percent of the estimated residential population of the places served by the reporting Agencies but made up nearly 21 % of all stops.

• When the data is filtered to Traffic stops disparities often worsen.

• Once stopped at traffic stops, using CPE’s method Black people and their property were searched substantially more often than White people, over 6 times more. It is not so bad for Hispanics; they were searched just under 2 times more often than White people.  

• Black people were subjected to substantially more force than all others, over 5.00 times as often as White people. On average, guns are pointed at Blacks over 8.00 times as often as at White people; a fact that, in part, explains why there is no granularity or transparency in CA-DOJ-produced Dashboards, or comments regarding Uses-of-Force.

• Around 9.3% percent of people who experienced Use of Force in the reporting period were Black. 

• Blacks have the highest rate of Vehicle Impounds (5.7) and The CHP is the largest impounder of vehicles, yet it scoffs at, rather, pointedly ignores, a 9th Circuit decision directing it to cease mandatory 30 day Impounds. The California Department of Justice represents the CHP, in court, in this matter.

Quite often, but not always, when the data is filtered to non-vehicle encounters, alone, many of the disparities diminish. This suggests that the presence of an automobile is a triggering mechanism; one that brings out the worst in some. 

The CA-DOJ-led RIPA Advisory Board structure is fatally flawed and unfit for purpose too. It is made so, especially, by the presence of three or more LEA scofflaws who sit on the RIPA Board; Law Enforcement Agencies that ignore court orders but are allowed to and did vote against initiatives meant to promote reform; Consent Search reform, and intimidatory language that persists in Racial Profiling complaint forms, for example. And the trial-balloon that we saw being launched, repeatedly now, by one or more of them, that disparities are not synonymous with discrimination, seems desperate. 

disparity

(formal)

1. a difference, especially one connected with unfair treatment

Even more desperate than the dictionary dispute is the re-promoted or regurgitated attribution of disparities to the disparately Black homeless and supposedly U.S. Census non-count of them. When that failed, we are introduced to the notion that it is hordes of Black tourists, who swell daytime activity and therefore disparity numbers. Almost, bringing up the rear are the noisemakers who make false claims about spikes in crime rates, claims that are universally false and not limited to those given to pro-police blathering. https://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/San-Francisco-crime-Chesa-Boudin-London-Breed-16751930.php. The rear is reserved for those who publish ”Academic” pieces that are supported  by, and rely upon, crime-rate adjustments that are said to be included in regression analyses that factor the number of Blacks who are present in the area under analysis. Such Academics, unsurprisingly, are sanctioned (within the positive meaning) by the CA-DOJ and are referred to as partners.

Facts are stubborn things, especially when hidden or when attempts are made to hide them. We have both conditions in the RIPA 2022 Report, its supplements, and appendices. The above facts are revolting, especially those that appear to have the imprimatur of the State (I suppose all do.)

The CA-DOJ’s RIPA Report for 2022 does contain some facts too, but far too few of them; facts exceeded by omissions, especially the Cluster of Abominations unearthed by the LAPD OIG; a massiveness that appears only as a footnote in the 2022 RIPA Report. If pressed, or placed under duress, it would be my opinion that RIPA data is more worthless than not, and that it was deliberately made so.

The 2022 RIPA Stop Data Report is top-heavy with omissions and absurdities; distinctions without differences; things that those who authorized its publication would have us believe or ignore. I will do neither!

In addition to the well documented failures in data-collection and reporting that have rendered the Cal-Gang Database, in its present state, practically useless, my report found that “disproportionate force is experienced consistently across all age brackets by the Black or African American population,” with Black residents experiencing police force almost six times more frequently than white residents, after vehicular stops. With national reports stating that Black people, on average, are three times more likely than their white neighbors to experience unjustified force, it’s clear the California’s Law Enforcement departments have a serious problem; it doubles the national numbers. It is something that may explain why the CA-DOJ has published an unsupported U-O-F value (2.6.) Furthermore, preliminary but unincluded analyses suggests that Black people experienced deadly force three times more often than their White peers.

Even more troubling, the facts and figures in my electronic report (Dashboard) and those of the RIPA Advisory Board, rely solely on officers’ reporting of their uses of force, including the characteristics of the people upon whom force was used. In other words, the picture the report paints is based solely on the perceptions of the officers involved. It is easy to imagine that the (alarming) rates of force are much higher than what has been captured.  Indeed, with respect to The San Diego LEA’s, I have established that substantial numbers of Use-of-force records (SDPD, 40%) and other records that spawn Uses-of-force, are unreported. It’s a glaring problem — even if it’s standard practice among law enforcement agencies — and one State policy and action should do more to address.

Finally, on New Year’s Eve, the California Attorney General issued a proclamation of self-congratulation.  The text from a person whose department determined that Blacks were being subjected to the highest incidence of hate crimes and promptly established a task force to combat hate crimes, against Asians, said, “Looking back at 2021, California Attorney General Rob Bonta takes the opportunity to highlight the California Department of Justice’s efforts to protect the people of California by investigating and prosecuting violations of the law, while advancing policies to ensure fairness and opportunity.”  Every LEA that appears in the Dashboard has policies to ensure fairness, I expect that the 2022 RIPA Report says so: It has always trumpeted such things. Despite that, without exception, each LEA has produced records that show obscene unfair treatment; with almost every one trending worse; the very definition of disparity. Disparity = discrimination, according to the Oxford English Dictionary and it is absurd to contend otherwise. All would agree that the disparities are atrocious, although I prefer to term them obscene. I, and the fiction writers of the 2022 RIPA Report, claim to speak English. Building or rebuilding trust is more than a throwaway expression, and trust is related to truth. Truth does not include providing legal advice to LEAs to violate law; something that the CA-DOJ has done, with the Ventura County Sheriff’s Office, and likely has done with the independently incorrigible San Diego Sheriff’s Office.

A link to a useful  Dashboard of results is here. If you have used Google Sheets, you already know how to use it. Beware the filters.