Effective July 1, 2021, the Community Policing Act (CPA) was expanded to include not only reporting on traffic stops made by law enforcement, but also reporting on non-traffic (“pedestrian") stops involving stop and frisk and other investigatory detentions. As with the traffic stop reporting, the CPA requires the collection and reporting of pedestrian stop factors such as the reporting agency, the reason for the stop, the demographic characteristics of the person(s) stopped, and the outcome of the stop. This is the first year in which DCJS has analyzed and reported on pedestrian stop data.

This pedestrian supplement to the 2022 “Report on Analysis of Traffic Stop Data Collected Under Virginia’s Community Policing Act" (see RD533 (2022) - https://rga.lis.virginia.gov/Published/2022/RD533) contains descriptive findings on 7,663 statewide pedestrian stops from 155 law enforcement agencies (LEAs), collected by the Virginia State Police (VSP) for FY2022.

The Virginia Department of Criminal Justice Services’ (DCJS) examination of the first year of reported pedestrian stop data showed that the data reported for FY22 had several major limitations which restricted its ability to analyze and interpret the data. This is not unusual when a new statewide data collection system is started. As noted in the DCJS 2021 report on traffic stop data collection, LEAs faced several challenges implementing this new reporting mandate. Among these challenges were a lack of resources needed to comply with the mandate (especially for smaller agencies), and a lack of clarity in the legislative language defining what types of pedestrian stops to include in the reporting. This report contains recommendations to help address these challenges.

Because of these data limitations, the contents of this report should be viewed more as describing the state of the pedestrian stop reporting system at this time, and not as an accurate description of how many pedestrians were stopped, or of the characteristics of the individuals stopped or the circumstances of the stops.

Nonetheless, DCJS has a mandate to report its findings based on the limited data available for this first-year report. With that caveat in mind, the major findings from the data are:

• The vast majority (94.7%) of pedestrian stops were made for Terry Stops or “Other" type stops. Only 5.3% (409) of pedestrian stops were for a traffic or equipment violation.

• The most frequent outcome of a pedestrian stop was no enforcement action taken (30.7%). A warning was issued in 28.5% of stops, and a citation or summons was issued in 20.1% of stops.

• The subject was arrested in 20.7% of pedestrian stops. The subject was searched in 23.6% of stops.

• Physical force by either party was rare in pedestrian stops. Officer force against the subject of a stop was reported for only 1.4% of stops, and subject force against an officer was reported for only 1.2% of stops.

• Black subjects were stopped at higher rates than White subjects. Although only 19.7% of Virginia’s population aged 10+ in the dataset were Black, 41.3% of subjects stopped were Black.

• Black subjects stopped were searched at higher rates than White subjects. 26.4% of Black subjects had a search of their person conducted, compared to 20.8% of White subjects.

• Black subjects stopped were arrested at higher rates than White subjects. 23.6% of Black subjects were arrested, compared to 17.9% of White subjects.

• Hispanic subjects (of any race) were stopped at a similar rate to White subjects. Hispanics made up 9.3% of Virginia’s population aged 10+ in the dataset, and they made up 7.1% of subjects stopped.

• Hispanic subjects stopped were searched at higher rates than White subjects. 28.0% of stopped Hispanic subjects had a search of their person conducted, compared to 20.8% of White subjects.

• Hispanic subjects stopped were arrested at higher rates than either White subjects or Black subjects. 24.1% of stopped Hispanic subjects were arrested, compared to 17.9% of White subjects and 23.6% of Black subjects.

• American Indian/Alaskan Native and Asian/Pacific Islander subjects rarely occurred in the pedestrian stop dataset. Only nine American Indian/Alaskan Native subjects, and 136 Asian/Pacific Islander subjects, were reported. Given these small numbers, any findings on searches and arrests for these groups are likely due to random chance from isolated incidents.

During the pedestrian stop data collection, DCJS observed broad variations in the numbers of pedestrian stops reported across agencies; in some cases, some agencies serving localities with large populations reported making fewer pedestrian stops than some much smaller agencies. Additionally, many agencies reported varying interpretations as to which “investigatory detentions" required stop data collection.

To better understand these issues, DCJS and VSP interviewed several Virginia LEAs about their FY2022 pedestrian data collection practices. Based on these interviews, DCJS identified recurring factors that appeared to be driving the variations seen in the reporting. DCJS then conducted a survey of Virginia LEAs asking them to identify which of these factors applied to their agencies’ reporting. 72% of the responding agencies who submitted FY2022 pedestrian stops reported at least one data collection factor which may cause their stop volume to appear comparatively lower or higher.

To address these data reporting issues, and to generally improve DCJS’s ability to meet the intent of the CPA legislation, DCJS makes the following recommendations:

PEDESTRIAN REPORT RECOMMENDATION #1: Incorporate Specific Violation field into the analysis: DCJS and VSP should develop a list of offenses commonly associated with traffic stops, civil proceedings, and service of court orders to streamline the record auditing process. This will clarify stop cases which do and do not meet the general definition of “investigatory detention" that should be reported.

PEDESTRIAN REPORT RECOMMENDATION #2: Develop more pedestrian reporting-focused reporting training and documentation: DCJS and VSP should develop additional training and documentation to help law enforcement officers collect data on pedestrian stops.

PEDESTRIAN REPORT RECOMMENDATION #3: Provide additional resources to law enforcement agencies to support CPA data collection and reporting: DCJS should examine the feasibility of developing a grant program targeting Virginia law enforcement agencies that need additional resources to comply with the CPA.

DCJS also reintroduces three recommendations from the 2022 traffic stop report in the context of the pedestrian dataset:

TRAFFIC REPORT RECOMMENDATION #7: Virginia should examine the need to provide resources to smaller law enforcement agencies that had difficulty implementing the CPA data collection and reporting requirements.

TRAFFIC REPORT RECOMMENDATION #12: The General Assembly should consider providing more specific definition on the types of investigatory detentions which require CPA data collection. The addition of pedestrian stops to the collection mandate has introduced many nuanced detention scenarios which are ultimately left up to the interpretive judgement of individual LEAs on whether to report them as Community Policing Act data.

TRAFFIC REPORT RECOMMENDATION #13: Consider amending Community Policing Act legislation to change the annual CPA report deadline from July 1 to November 1.