the fact that City, police, and court officials failed to take any meaningful steps to evaluate or address the race-based impact of its law enforcement practices despite longstanding and widely reported racial disparities, and instead consistently reapplied police and court practices known to disparately impact African Americans.
- Consistency and Magnitude of Identified Racial Disparities
In assessing whether an official action was motivated in part by discriminatory intent, the actual impact of the action and whether it "bears more heavily on one race or another" may "provide an important starting point." Vill. of Arlington Heights, 429 U.S. at 266 (internal citations and quotation marks omitted). Indeed, in rare cases, statistical evidence of discriminatory impact may be sufficiently probative to itself establish discriminatory intent. Hazelwood School Dist. v. United States, 433 U.S. 299, 307–08 (1977) (noting in the Title VII context that where "gross statistical disparities can be shown, they alone may in a proper case constitute prima facie proof of a pattern or practice of discrimination").
The race-based disparities we have found are not isolated or aberrational; rather, they exist in nearly every aspect of Ferguson police and court operations. As discussed above, statistical analysis shows that African Americans are more likely to be searched but less likely to have contraband found on them; more likely to receive a citation following a stop and more likely to receive multiple citations at once; more likely to be arrested; more likely to have force used against them; more likely to have their case last longer and require more encounters with the municipal court; more likely to have an arrest warrant issued against them by the municipal court; and more likely to be arrested solely on the basis of an outstanding warrant. As noted above, many of these disparities would occur by chance less than one time in 1000.
These disparities provide significant evidence of discriminatory intent, as the "impact of an official action is often probative of why the action was taken in the first place since people usually intend the natural consequences of their actions." Reno v. Bossier Parish Sch. Bd., 520 U.S. 471, 487 (1997); see also Davis, 426 U.S. at 242 ("An invidious discriminatory purpose may often be inferred from the totality of the relevant facts, including the fact, if it is true, that the [practice] bears more heavily on one race than another."). These disparities are unexplainable on grounds other than race and evidence that racial bias, whether implicit or explicit, has shaped law enforcement conduct.[1]
- Direct Evidence of Racial Bias
Our investigation uncovered direct evidence of racial bias in the communications of influential Ferguson decision makers. In email messages and during interviews, several court and law enforcement personnel expressed discriminatory views and intolerance with regard to race, religion, and national origin. The content of these communications is unequivocally derogatory, dehumanizing, and demonstrative of impermissible bias.
- ↑ Social psychologists have long recognized the influence of implicit racial bias on decision making, and law enforcement experts have similarly acknowledged the impact of implicit racial bias on law enforcement decisions. See, e.g., R. Richard Banks, Jennifer L. Eberhardt, & Lee Ross, Discrimination and Implicit Bias in a Racially Unequal Society, 94 Cal. L. Rev. 1169 (2006); Tracey G. Gove, Implicit Bias and Law Enforcement, The Police Chief (October 2011).
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