Study Highlights Impact of Race in San Diego Police Use of Force and searches

A study released Thursday by the Center for Policing Equity shows black San Diego residents are subjected to police force 4.8 times more often than white San Diego residents. Other studies, including one released in 2020 by KPBS, have shown similar patterns. SDSU researchers found the same problem in a study released in 2017, but the city was reported to have pressured the authors to water down the language of the study’s findings by, for example, changing the word “bias” to the word “disparities” in more than two dozen instances.

Black and LatinX San Diego residents are also more than twice as likely to be searched by police after being stopped than white residents, according to the new CPE study.