Denver Police To Begin Collecting Race, Gender Data
DENVER (CBS4)- Police in Denver will soon collect racial and gender data, along with other information, from some traffic and pedestrian stops. That information will be used to look for any biased policing within the department.
Denver Police Chief Robert White said there is no definitive plan on how the information will be collected but hopes to have a policy in place by the end of the year.
White described how the data collection would work at a news conference Monday. He said race and other information would likely be collected from suspicious traffic and pedestrian stops.
"It needs to be something that can be done through technology, so the officer can make the traffic stop and simply be able to get back in his car and hopefully through his computer click the box to say, 'This is where I made the stop, this is why the stop was made, this is the race of the individual, this is how long the stop took.' Something along those lines," said White.
White said given the current climate, this type of information is more important than ever when it comes to community accountability.
"It certainly has gotten my attention and gotten the attention of many residents in our community," he said.
White says in an effort to be as nonintrusive as possible his initial thought is to let the officer determine the race of the individual.
"We want to collect the right data, we want it to be meaningful and we want to make some sense out of it," White said.
The ultimate goal would be to determine whether or not there's any racial bias within the department.
"Hopefully the information will show that we are not doing any kind of profiling. If it doesn't show favorable, then we have a responsibility to correct it and I'm 100 percent committed to correcting it," White said.
Karen Morfitt Joined the CBS4 team as a reporter in 2013. She covers a variety of stories in and around metro Denver. Connect with her on Facebook, follow her on Twitter @karenmorfitt or email her tips.
