State lawmakers looked at how race factors into DPS traffic stops, to see if Texas Troopers racially profile motorists and to determine if new legislation should be introduced in the upcoming session.

According to an independent review of the Department of Public Safety’s records, black drivers are 59 percent more likely to be searched during a traffic stop than white drivers.

The analysis of millions of traffic stops from 2009 to mid-2015 stirred up some heated debate at the House Committee on County Affairs hearing Tuesday.

Representative Garnet Coleman (D-Houston), who chairs the committee, said the numbers don’t lie. 

“I don’t know why you won’t admit that?” Coleman asked Steve McCraw, Director of the chief law enforcement agency in the state.

McCraw disputed the numbers, claiming the “cherry picking data sets” are flawed because of the department’s efforts along the border.

Several times McCraw noted that, on the orders of lawmakers, DPS started saturation patrols in the Rio Grande Valley in 2014.

Coleman fictitiously said he didn’t realize “so many black people lived in the Rio Grande Valley.”

When McCraw didn’t back down Coleman said, “I know you went to school, I know you understand statistics, know you understand numbers. Don’t tell me that you’re going to sit up and say that that particular circumstance is skewing all the numbers in the state of Texas for black people.”

McCraw quickly interjected, “I did not say for black people.”

The analysis focused on the disparity between black and white drivers because the professor who researched the data believed the results for Hispanic motorists would represent a lower and inaccurate disparity after a KXAN News investigation found DPS incorrectly recorded the race of Hispanic drivers as white.

The Political Science professor of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Frank Baumgartner, PhD, who conducted the alalysis, said the deportment’s efforts along the border does not change his findings. Baumgartne said from 2011 to mid-2015 the racial disparity remained right around a 59-percent—meaning minority drivers were more than twice as likely to be searched before and after the saturation patrols started.   

Baumgartner said the racial disparity is a pattern that’s seen in every state, not just Texas. He described it as a national problem that needs to be addressed and that the evidence is “so clear and robust” the disparity cannot be explained away.

When asked if the data shows Texas Troopers racially profile drivers, Baumgartner said he could not give lawmakers a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer.

“What evidence would be enough to constitute racial profiling?” Baumgartner said that depends on how the state defines racial profiling—he could only present the data. 

That’s why Coleman said the state might need to rewrite the statute or introduce new legislation during the 2017 session. 

McCraw said, “Whatever it is we will look into it.”

According to Baumgartner, the racial disparity rate in Texas is not the worst the country and it’s not the best—the state falls rights in the middle.

 “I’m not happy Texas is in the middle,” McCraw said the department is concerned about racial profiling and DPS could always be better.  

“Everyone should be treated the same, period,” said McCraw.