Traffic Stop Ethnicity (650A/23)
Request
I write to request information under the Freedom of Information Act about recording the ethnicity of drivers stopped by your police force. For clarity, I am not looking for statistics concerning stop and searches. I am only interested in traffic stops.
Specifically, I would like to know:
Has your force run any pilot schemes between 2015 and 2022 where officers were required to record drivers’ ethnicity during a traffic stop?
For reference, such a scheme was piloted by the Metropolitan Police in 2022 (https://gbr01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fuk-news%2F2022&data=05%7C01%7Cfoi%40westmidlands.police.uk%7C12e0b248e90a4cbd2fc508db3e763b91%7C2b0f1af29e024cfb982fc61fd716ee98%7C0%7C0%7C638172449747338638%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=bKk0io97nVjxli99hchjYH4uDVQQsvUoZczox0%2F2XMA%3D&reserved=0…).
If your force ran such a scheme, please provide the information collected, of drivers stopped broken down by ethnicity. Please provide this information in Excel format.
If such a scheme has not been run, please provide any ethnic breakdown of drivers stopped by your force between 2015 and 2022.
Response
Please find attached our response.
Every effort is made to ensure that the figures presented are accurate and complete. However, it is important to note that these data have been extracted from a number of data sources used by forces for police purposes. The detail collected to respond specifically to your request is subject to the inaccuracies inherent in any large-scale recording system. As a consequence, care should be taken to ensure data collection processes and their inevitable limitations are taken into account when interpreting those data.
The figures provided therefore are our best interpretation of relevance of data to your request, but you should be aware that the collation of figures for ad hoc requests may have limitations and this should be taken into account when those data are used.
If you decide to write an article / use the enclosed data we would ask you to take into consideration the factors highlighted in this document so as to not mislead members of the public or official bodies, or misrepresent the relevance of the whole or any part of this disclosed material.