California’s Racial and Identity Profiling Act (RIPA), enacted in 2015, requires police agencies to report detailed records for every citizen they stop to the state’s Department of Justice. Each year, the RIPA committee analyzes these reports submitted by law enforcement.
In the most recent data for 2023, California law enforcement officers employed force on 24,069 individuals during stops, which is a mere 0.5% of all stops performed. Interestingly, the predominant method of force used by most agencies was pointing a gun at individuals, accounting for 91% of these cases. Notably, the RIPA committee discovered that Black individuals constituted the largest group of those stopped without any significant findings.
Under the RIPA guidelines, officers must document specific details of each stop, including ethnicity, gender, and other identifiers. This data covers a range of traffic stops, which represent the bulk of the recorded stops, in addition to pedestrian encounters.
The analysis explores whether these stops lead to arrests or other law enforcement actions, and if officers rely on minor infractions—often traffic violations—as justification for investigating more serious offenses such as gun and drug crimes. Variations in traffic violations among different ethnicities can stem from multiple factors, including different driving behaviors. A 2019 Pew Research Center survey indicated that 44% of Black adults have experienced what they perceive as unjust traffic stops based on their race.
Furthermore, the RIPA committee found that transgender women were frequently stopped under the justification of “suspicion of criminal activity” or “reasonable suspicion” rather than for traffic violations. Transgender men also had a significant rate of stops related to reasonable suspicion. In many instances, officers may invoke reasonable suspicion to justify a stop even when no clear violation has taken place, if they suspect the individual might be involved in criminal activities.
Transgender advocates, however, contend that law enforcement often targets them under the guise of “reasonable suspicion” simply for not conforming to traditional gender norms, leading to instances of discrimination.
The committee’s analysis of stop data from 2021 further revealed that law enforcement officers across California applied force against Black individuals more frequently than against other ethnic groups, and that Hispanic individuals experienced a higher rate of force compared to their white counterparts.
