NYPD will track race of people they question. Will others follow?

Tracking could hinder police work, critics say

The new law does not include tracking casual conversations between police officers and members of the public. However, Jillian Snider, an adjunct lecturer at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and former NYPD officer, said officers may be less likely to engage in general conversation with people if they have to document other conversations, which could hurt the investigatory process.

She highlighted another concern: the data collection could result in inaccuracies: poor data collection. In one example of this problem, the USA TODAY Network found that in 57 cities and towns, police marked the majority of men with Hispanic surnames as white on traffic tickets.  

Snider said accurate data collection is not a simple or straightforward undertaking.

“I assume most people are not going to be forthcoming with that information, so you’re gonna have a lot of cops doing a lot of guessing on what people’s demographics and ethnicity are,” she said. “Or on the complete opposite end, you might just have cops not talking to people, period, unless they have reasonable suspicion to do so.”

Snider, who is also a policy director for R Street Institute, said she is unaware of other departments in the country where police are required to collect data about these low-level stops. She thinks the vote on Tuesday could be a harbinger for change.

“In cities and localities that have council members that are of the ideological persuasion of those in the New York City Council, I do think that this could start a trend,” she said.