Falls County Commissioners accept racial profiling report for Sheriff’s Office

The Falls County commissioners were presented with the Falls County Sheriff Office's Full Racial Profiling report in their meeting on Feb. 24.

The report, filed on February 13, details the written policy followed by the Falls County Sheriff's Department members, along with statistics from the 902 stops made during the 2019 year.

The Full Racial Profiling report is filed yearly by the Falls County Sheriff's Office, and both the Constables and Justice of the Peace in all four precincts, to the Texas Commission of Law Enforcement.

It breaks the total stops made down to gender, ethnicity, violation, location, if a search was conducted – if so, why and what was found, the outcome of the stops, and if physical force was used.

Agencies are not legally required to submit the racial breakdown for the result of a traffic stop. Categories including searches conducted, resulting arrests, warnings, citations and physical force, for instance, do not have to have racial breakdown attached to the numbers.

The report state that of the 902 stops made during 2019, 361 people were female and 541 were male.

149 of the people stopped were Caucasian, 189 were African American, 13 were Asian/Pacific Islander and 551 of them were Hispanic/Latino. Zero Native Americans/Alaskan Natives were stopped.

Of the ones named above, only 20 stops involved officers with prior knowledge as to the ethnicity of the driver.

According to the report, 57 people were stopped for a law violations, 762 for moving traffic violations, 77 for vehicle traffic violations and five were stopped because of prior knowledge the officer had about the individual.

719 of the stops were made on a State Highway, 96 on a United States highway, 50 on Private Property/Other, and just five on a County Road.

Only 34 of the 902 stops resulted in a search, 15 of which resulted in contraband being found.

Of those 34 stops, none were down for inventory purposes, seven were due to probable cause, three were due in incidents to arrest, one was due to visible contraband, and 23 were conducted as consent searches.

Contraband was discovered in 15 of 34 searches conducted. 14 of those instances consisted of drug related contraband and one was filed under “'other.”

The Report states that 37 written warnings were given during 2019, along with 562 verbal warnings. 293 citations were given out, while five stops ended in an arrest. Five resulted in both a citation and an arrest.

Of those 10 arrests, three were based on violations of traffic law, six were based on penal code violations, and two were for outstanding warrants, some overlapping.

There were no stops that resulted in bodily injury from physical force.

Because the State of Texas can only standardize the collection of this type of data, the analysis varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction.

The Falls County Commissioners accepted the report with a unanimous vote.