Census change complicates racial profiling data in Massachusetts, presents opportunity

Hispanic is widely considered an ethnicity, defined by the U.S. Census Bureau as a person of Cuban, Mexican, Puerto Rican, South or Central American, or other Spanish culture or origin. It’s a multi-faceted and even shifting identity that can be held by Americans of all races.

But the Massachusetts traffic citation — the source of statewide data used in court proceedings and public policy research on racial profiling — doesn’t have a field for officers to mark both a driver’s race and ethnicity. For more than two decades, the citation has only included a field labeled “race.”

Hispanic is one of six categories from which officers are instructed to choose when filling in the driver race field on the ticket. One police training manual defines “Hispanic” similarly to the Census.

Still, several experts and advocates said that even if Hispanic is one of the options given to officers filling out tickets, the lack of a separate ethnicity field contributes to the erasure of Hispanic drivers from traffic stop data by increasing the likelihood officers will mark them as white — whether by mistake, because of inadequate training or intentionally.

Hispanic and Latino people make up 13.1% of the Massachusetts population, according to the 2020 U.S. Census, second only to people who identify as white.

A USA TODAY Network investigation by the Cape Cod Times, Worcester Telegram & Gazette and USA TODAY revealed that in nearly 60 communities, police marked the majority of men with Hispanic surnames as white on citations issued from 2014 to 2020. Experts said the practice skews studies of racial disparities in traffic enforcement by inflating the number of white drivers cited and deflating the number of drivers of color cited.

The data is used by researchers probing inequities in traffic enforcement, the most common police-public interaction, and is also the foundation of legal defenses involving allegations of racial profiling. The state public safety agency, led by Secretary Terrence Reidy, has yet to respond to the USA TODAY Network findings.

District Court Chief Justice Stacey Fortes, citing the need for traffic stop data in profiling probes and the state’s new data equity law, said in a statement to the Times that the court is now considering the addition of a separate ethnicity box to the state’s citation.

But the categories used by Massachusetts police to collect driver demographics since 2000 might soon become close to the national standard.

The U.S. Census Bureau has proposed asking about Americans' race and ethnicity in one question, rather than in two separate questions, a change that would result in the nation adopting similar categories to those now used by Massachusetts police when ticketing drivers.

The looming federal change, which isn’t final but seems likely, according to government officials, might make it more complicated for the state to address the miscoding of Hispanic drivers in state traffic stop data. It's a problem that experts including Alexis Piquero, a former director of the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics, said underlines the need to audit traffic stop data collected by police.

Piquero, now a University of Miami professor of sociology and criminology, said the Census proposal presents a unique occasion for Massachusetts to overhaul its traffic stop data collection systems, most of which don’t track driver demographics on stops that end with verbal warnings — an estimated 40% of all stops — let alone other data points experts say give necessary context to traffic stops.

“Number one, they should collect all stops,” Piquero said of Massachusetts police departments. “Number two, every department in the state should do an annual audit, not for nefarious reasons, but just to know what the hell is going on.”

How does Census change relate to racial profiling data?

Proposed changes to the U.S. Census would essentially add “Hispanic or Latino” as a possible answer to a question about respondents’ race or ethnicity, rather than race alone, bringing Census categories closer in line with those already used by Massachusetts officers ticketing drivers.

The proposal, which is subject to change, would ask Census respondents to identify as White, Hispanic or Latino, Black or African American, Asian, American Indian or Alaska Native, Middle Eastern or North African, or Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander.

"The proposal for a combined race/ethnicity question encourages the self-identification of race and/or ethnicity, and multiple responses are permitted," Rachel Marks, Chief of Racial Statistics for the Census Bureau, said in a statement.

Under the new Census proposal, a respondent could check Black and Hispanic, for example.

That’s not an option for Massachusetts police filling out traffic tickets, who must pick one category denoting their perception of the driver's race.

The proposed Census changes are intended to better reflect the way the country’s Hispanic and Latino residents see themselves today, Piquero said.

The federal Office of Management and Budget, which sets the categories used by the Census, cited research showing that a combined race and ethnicity question results in more complete and accurate data, and many researchers agree a single question about race and ethnicity will lead to a better count of the nation’s Latino residents.

When asked about Hispanic origin separately from race, a significant number of 2020 Census respondents who identified as Hispanic or Latino chose “some other race” on the race question or left it blank because they did not see themselves as white or Black, for example.

People who identify as Hispanic or Latino made up 19% of the U.S. population in 2020, according to the Pew Research Center.

Lorna Rivera, Director of the University of Massachusetts Boston’s Mauricio Gastón Institute for Latino Community Development and Public Policy, is concerned the wording on the combined question will lead to an undercount of the nation’s Afro-Latinos, who she noted experience some of the state’s worst disparities in areas including health and housing.

“Having the question be ‘what is your race or ethnicity’ is going to undercount the number of Black Latinos, and this is a very serious problem,” Rivera said.

Both Rivera and Piquero think the Census should ultimately move toward questions that better allow people to describe themselves, but for now, the federal government seems likely to adopt the changes as proposed.

The Office of Management and Budget is on track to finalize the plan by summer 2024, according to an agency official. New race and ethnicity categories would likely begin appearing on government forms soon after, though full implementation could take years.

How should Massachusetts classify drivers given proposed Census change?

Piquero, echoing other researchers who said consistency among datasets is key, recommended the state traffic citation mirror the Census, and change when it changes.

Adding an ethnicity box to denote a driver’s Hispanic or Latino origin now, and then changing the citation again to match the new Census categories once implemented would show “how percentages change or don’t change,” he said.

“In my mind, this is a really good opportunity for Massachusetts to do something very quick, very simple,” Piquero said. “Because even if the Census makes a decision, it may be still years down the road before everything gets changed on the forms.”

A change in demographic categories available to officers filling out traffic tickets would also be a good occasion for Massachusetts to provide statewide officer training that could reduce the number of Hispanic drivers being wrongly coded as white, he said.

“If they're miscoding for non-nefarious reasons, then this is a way to correct it,” said Piquero, who co-chaired a federal interagency working group that authored a 2023 report about transparency in law enforcement data commissioned by President Joe Biden while leading the Bureau of Justice Statistics.

The USA TODAY Network analysis of traffic citations showed the practice has a significant effect on traffic stop data, especially in some communities.

In Holyoke, for example, police citation data indicates about a quarter of stops of the city’s adult male residents from 2014 to 2020 were of Hispanic men. If those with Hispanic last names had been identified as Hispanic instead of white, their share of stops would have risen threefold to nearly three-quarters.

Piquero said that training should be followed by regular audits of officers’ traffic stop data. That type of supervision would help police chiefs identify officers who miscode drivers as well as officers who stop drivers of color disproportionately, and allow supervisors to provide timely supplementary guidance, training, or, if necessary, discipline.

Few Massachusetts departments would be able to conduct those types of audits because the demographics of the estimated 40% of drivers given verbal warnings remain largely unavailable even for internal review. Driver data is collected only for stops that end with a citation or written warning.

Police need data on all stops to conduct meaningful supervision

Though police chief association leaders lobbied state lawmakers against requiring municipal police to track all stops in 2019, some chiefs say collecting a complete dataset is necessary.

Both the Massachusetts State Police and Boston Police Department already track data on all stops because of internal policies, as all police in neighboring Connecticut have for more than a decade.

“It doesn't matter what the outcome is, whether it's a verbal warning or a citation or written warning or a criminal complaint, the data should be collected,” Northampton Police Chief Jody Kasper said during a phone interview last year.

Without tracking stops ending in verbal warnings, any analysis of traffic stop disparities is seriously flawed, experts including Piquero said.

“The fact that (verbal warnings) are not even coded is just mind-boggling in this day and age,” he said. “How you would not want to have an understanding of what police do is mind-boggling.”

The U.S. Department of Justice, which is investigating the Worcester Police Department, criticized the Minneapolis Police Department for failing to supervise officers’ traffic stops in its June 2023 investigatory report, which found “stark racial disparities (in traffic stops) that violate the law” and “yielded few gains to public safety.”

“Without clear, complete, consistent documentation, supervisors cannot meaningfully review police actions,” federal investigators wrote in their report on Minneapolis. “The result is that supervisors cannot identify and address trends or problematic conduct, such as unlawful or improper stops, racial profiling, harassment, theft, and sexual misconduct.”

Mass. RMV and District Court have authority to change traffic citation

Authority to require the collection of data on all traffic stops lies with the state Legislature, but the authority to alter the Massachusetts traffic citation lies jointly with the Registrar of Motor Vehicles and the Administrative Justice of the District Court, according to state spokespeople from multiple agencies.

Motor Vehicles Registrar Colleen Ogilvie declined to comment on whether she would support adding a driver ethnicity field to the state’s traffic citation, according to Registry of Motor Vehicles spokesperson Jacquelyn Goddard.

But District Court Chief Justice Stacey Fortes, acknowledging the need for demographic traffic stop data to probe racial inequities on the road, is considering the addition, Trial Court spokesperson Jennifer Donahue told the Times in a statement.

“While current law does not require the collection of data concerning ethnicity on the Massachusetts Uniform Citation … the Chief Justice of the District Court appreciates the importance of this information to help inform possible patterns of racial and ethnic disparities during traffic stops,” Donahue said in the statement.

“The Chief Justice of the District Court is committed to beginning a dialogue with the leadership of the Registry of Motor Vehicles and other Executive Branch agencies, which are subject to the recent provisions of the Data Equity legislation, about how to best use the Massachusetts Uniform Citation to collect ethnicity data,” the statement concluded.

How could data equity legislation affect traffic stop data collection?

In August, Gov. Maura Healey signed “data equity” legislation that requires state agencies already collecting figures on race or ethnicity to capture much more detailed demographic data than is currently recorded.

But it is unclear how the law would apply to the state’s traffic citation, which is filled out by officers instructed to use their best judgment when recording driver demographics on the ticket — a method of data collection maligned by many Massachusetts police chiefs who would prefer drivers self-identify to the RMV when getting or renewing a license.

In response to the data equity law, the Executive Office for Administration and Finance is now reviewing existing data collection processes across state government, including data collection processes related to traffic tickets, according to an agency spokesperson.

The next step in implementing Massachusetts' data equity legislation is for the agency to issue draft regulations by Jan. 1, 2025. The agency will then hold a public hearing to gather comments from the public. The law is scheduled to go into effect the following year, after which the Executive Office for Administration and Finance will hold annual public hearings on implementation.

Census change opportunity for Mass. to lead on traffic stop research

Piquero said the looming Census change offers a chance for Massachusetts to overhaul its stop data collection and analysis practices — not only to bring the state in line with others including Connecticut, but to become a national leader in a foundational area of policing where most advances are made at the state level.

USA TODAY Network’s reporting about the erasure of Hispanic drivers from traffic stop data illuminated a problem that Piquero said he has no doubt is happening nationwide.

But without federal guidelines about traffic stop data collection — guidelines Piquero thinks are overdue — ferreting out and fixing traffic stop data problems such as widespread miscoding of Hispanic drivers as white will remain a state-by-state project.

Given the current condition of its traffic stop data, Massachusetts has work to do, Piquero said.

“Massachusetts leads in so many really good ways,” he said. “Here's a chance where you can now be once again leading an effort where people will say, ‘Look at what Massachusetts is doing. Let's take a plane, let's go to Logan, let's find out what they're doing and let's take it back to our community because we trust what they're doing and we trust why they are doing it.’”

Jeannette Hinkle is a staff writer for the Cape Cod Times. Contact her at jhinkle@capecodonline.com.

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This article originally appeared on Cape Cod Times: Census change complicates racial profiling data issue in Massachusetts