Almost 50 million people reported contact with police in 2022, the lowest total since 2008.
Still, an analysis by the Prison Policy Initiative (PPI) of a report from the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics’ Public-Police Contact series shows that racial disparities in police interactions, misconduct, and use of force remained pervasive in 2022.
PPI says that Black people continued to face higher rates of enforcement actions, police misconduct, and use of force despite relatively similar rates of contact with police. The new data also show heightened levels of police interaction and use of force against young adults, and a growing rate of use of force against women.
Almost 30 million people initiated contact with police in 2022. Only half of the people reported possible crimes. More often, they were seeking help. Some 25% were reporting a non-crime emergency, such as a medical emergency or car accident they weren’t involved in; 26% were reporting other non-emergencies (including requests for custody enforcement or other services, accidental 911 calls, asking for directions, and looking for lost pets), and 3% were block watch-related contacts.
In 2022, fewer than 1 in 5 U.S. residents over the age of 16 had face-to-face contact with police, down from 24% in 2018. BJS attributes this decline to a decrease in the number of traffic stops, which fell by 33% from over 24 million to 16.2 million over this same four-year period.
Traffic stops were still the most common type of police-initiated contact: more than 12 million drivers were stopped by police in 2022, and these stops are often fraught with racial bias and violence.
White people were far more likely than Black people, Hispanic people, and Asian people to initiate contact with the police, for reasons including to report possible crimes and emergencies, to participate in block watches, or to seek other kinds of help from police.
People of color — Black people in particular — were more likely to experience police-initated contact, including street stops, traffic stops, and arrests. Forty-five percent of Black and Hispanic people who had any contact with the police were approached by police, compared to 40% or fewer of white people, Asian people, and people of other races.
Not only were Black people disproportionately likely to experience traffic stops and arrests, but they were also more likely to experience enforcement actions from police during street stops and traffic stops, and to face police misconduct and use of force:
Black people were somewhat more likely to face enforcement actions from police in street stops: 18% of Black people stopped received a warning compared to 15% of white people, and 8% of Black people stopped were searched or arrested compared to 6% of white people. Hispanic people were far less likely (11%) to receive an enforcement action when stopped than white (24%) or Black people (25%).
Traffic stops are a common site of police violence: according to the 2023 Police Violence Report from Mapping Police Violence, more than 100 police killings occurred at traffic stops in 2023. The new Bureau of Justice Statistics data show traffic stops continued to be the most common reason for police-initiated contact across all races, but Black people are stopped at higher rates than others: almost two-thirds (62%) of all Black people whose most recent contact with police in 2022 was police-initiated were the driver in a traffic stop compared to 56-59% among all other groups.
Black drivers were also searched or arrested at a rate more than double that of other racial groups: 9% of Black drivers were searched or arrested during traffic stops, compared to 4% of Hispanic drivers, 3% of white drivers, and 5% of drivers of other races. I
Black people disproportionately experienced police misconduct – defined as the use of slurs, bias, and sexual harassment – in their most recent encounters with police. Four percent of Black people experienced misconduct in their most recent police contact, which is six times the proportion of white people who experienced misconduct (0.7%). Hispanic people also experienced police misconduct in their most recent encounter with police at a significantly higher rate – twice the rate of white people.
Black people were over three times as likely as white people to experience the threat or use of force – defined as threat of force, handcuffing, pushing, grabbing, hitting, kicking, using a weapon or other use of nonfatal force (these data do not include people who died from fatal use of force) – and more than twice as likely to experience police shouting or cursing at them.
Since 2020, the proportion of white and Hispanic people experiencing the threat or use of force has actually decreased, while the proportion of Black people experiencing threats or nonfatal use of force has increased slightly.