Report shows race discrepancy in Beaufort citations. Here’s how police are addressing it
The Beaufort Police Department gives more citations to Black, Hispanic residents of the city than white residents, but statistics are trending more equitably, according to a police accountability report.
Using six months of department data, the grassroots Citizens Task Force for Law Enforcement Accountability posted a report on Thursday that reviewed the agency on a number of factors.
Non-white residents of Beaufort city received half of all citations from July to December 2020, while making up only 36% of the city, the report says. White residents are nearly 65% of the city population.
Additionally, white citizens received a larger percentage of warnings from Beaufort Police officers, 58% during that same period. That number more closely matches the actual population sizes.
The task force is made up of 30 residents across the county and was formed in July 2020 after the killing of George Floyd. Members met with Beaufort Police Chief Dale McDorman in August 2020 and in January 2021 to talk about how to build more trust between the community and its police department, the report said.
The group published its first report on the Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office, which revealed that Black and Hispanic county residents made up nearly 58% of citations from the Sheriff’s Office, though they represent less than one-quarter of its population.
Important caveats to consider when comparing the two reports: the Sheriff’s Office is more than four times larger than the Beaufort Police Department and polices tens of thousands more people. Additionally, the report for the Sheriff’s Office covered the entire year of 2020, while the data on Beaufort City is from the past six months.
Trends
The report notes that some factors seem to be improving at the department.
“This report was harder to highlight because it appears that they’re doing things pretty well in the city of Beaufort. They’re not overly using use of force, their complaints are low, their citations and warnings are trending [more equitably],” said Lisa Allen, the founder of the task force. “They’re responding to the public, which I find extremely encouraging.”
Citations started matching the populations of white and black residents in the last two months of 2020. The group said it considers the data a positive step, though it remains to be seen if it will hold.
Warnings increased for Black residents in November and December as well.
“While there is no way to prove its cause, we hope officers are extending the benefit of the doubt more often to Black residents much like they do to White residents,” the document states.
Chief McDorman, who took over after former Chief Matt Clancy passed away in July, states his officers receive “extensive” racial bias training. He said the agency had a training session as recently as June 2020.
“Unintentional bias does occur, and we want to make sure that all of our officers are trained to be aware of it,” McDorman said.
Diversity
The 56-officer department is mostly white, and operates in a majority white city.
The agency is 89% white and 75% male, according to the report.
“A big challenge we have is the cost of living in this area,” McDorman said. “We recently offered a $10,000 sign-on bonus and even with that, we received only one application from a certified officer. We will continue to explore every possible avenue to recruit the best qualified and diverse workforce possible.”
The accountability group recommends the agency continue to focus on recruiting nonwhite officers through the school resource officer program and attending community events.
A New York Times analysis found that between 2007 and 2016, of 467 U.S. police departments with at least 100 officers, two-thirds became whiter relative to their communities.
Transparency and data
The Beaufort Police Department posts on its website daily reports of police activity, demographics of citations, city crime statistics, and annual use of force and pursuit analyses.
The task force relied on this online data to create its report.
The department is the only police agency in the county with that much available data on its inner workings. The agency began posting the data in the late summer.
The Bluffton Police Department posts daily activity reports as well. The Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office and Port Royal Police Department do not post regular statistics or reports online.
Prior to the Beaufort Police Department’s first meeting with the task force, filing a complaint on an officer was a cumbersome process.
A citizen would have to sign a sworn affidavit to file a complaint, according to Allen.
As of a few months ago, she said the Beaufort Police Department now allows citizens to submit complaints anonymously.
The Beaufort Police Department did not have last year’s data on use of force available, but plans to release it this month. Force was used in 29 of 710 arrests in 2019, all involving grabs, holds and joint locks.
McDorman said the agency is also launching a community advisory board, similar to what Bluffton enacted over the summer,
as soon as this quarter.
This story was originally published February 5, 2021 at 4:28 AM.
