Evaluating and Mapping Demographic Disparities with Traffic Stop Data
Chad Kite
Department of Mathematics
Faculty Supervisor: Anandamayee Majumdar
According to the Stanford Open Policing Project (SOPP), there are over 50,000 traffic stops conducted in the United States on an average day, yet there is no prescribed means to record and report those stops. This prevents the contextualization of news-worthy events pursuant to traffic stops, such as police violence, within the broader scope of regional and national averages and trends. It also prevents analysis that could either improve trust in public institutions or highlight areas for improvement of policing activities. To help bridge this gap, we use traffic stop records, census information, geospatial data, and traffic measurements to model the number and demographic composition of annual traffic stops at the county level across the U.S.