This is the fifth report from the Virginia Department of Criminal Justice Services (DCJS) analyzing the data on traffic stops in the Virginia State Police’s Community Policing Database, as mandated by the Code of Virginia § 9.1-192. It contains a review of how the data was collected and analyzed as well as preliminary findings of data from 1,033,785 traffic stops reported in Virginia during the 12-month period between January 1, 2024, and December 31, 2024. This report also presents the findings from analyses of statewide data; aggregated data from the seven Virginia State Police (VSP) Divisions; and data from each individual law enforcement agency that reported sufficient data to the Community Policing Database.

The information presented in this report should be interpreted with caution. Although this analysis identified disparities in traffic stop rates related to race/ethnicity, it does NOT allow us to determine or measure specific reasons for these disparities. Most importantly for this study, this analysis does NOT allow us to determine the extent to which these disparities may or may not be due to bias-based profiling or to other factors that can vary depending on race or ethnicity. These other factors include:

• Differences in locations where police focus their patrol activities.

• Differences in underlying regional populations.

• Differences in driving patterns among individuals and across racial/ethnic groups.

• Lack of a scientifically established baseline for accurately determining the number of drivers in each racial/ethnic group who are on the road in any given area and subject to being stopped while driving.

The analysis of racial disparity is a complex field with a vast array of potential contributing factors. Many data elements play influential roles in racial/ethnic patterns of traffic enforcement but are unavailable to DCJS. Factors such as the race and/or gender of the officer performing the stop, agency policies and community priorities driving enforcement policies, as well as police report narratives outlining legal justifications for stop, search, and arrest can all inform stop patterns but are not within the current purview of available Community Policing Act data.

Additionally, the data presented in this report cannot reflect any stop trends from agencies which did not provide data or records that were excluded for completeness issues. As such, while the report presents stop, search, and arrest disparities based on the available data, they should NOT be construed as complete and final proof of disparity OR any explanation of contributing factors which drive genuine disparities which may exist.

This report does not tabulate the many positive actions that can occur pursuant to a traffic stop such as seizures of guns, confiscation of drugs, ensuring valid and current drivers’ licenses, arrests of individuals with outstanding warrants, and removal of impaired drivers from public roadways. The Community Policing Act imposes narrow requirements for data collection and analysis, and any benefits of traffic or pedestrian stops are not within the scope of the law.

The Community Policing Act (CPA) is still in the intermediate stages of implementation. Although improvements in the data collection and reporting process have increased the completeness of the annual datasets, we are not yet able to definitively say that data reporting is 100% accurate. As the report notes, several police departments and sheriff’s offices - especially smaller agencies with limited resources - continue to face challenges establishing the data collection and reporting required under the Act. Over 70% of local law enforcement agencies (LEAs) in Virginia employ 50 or fewer full-time sworn officers, and half of those employ ten or fewer. Many of these agencies have faced challenges fulfilling all requirements imposed by the Act and aligning their collection practices with the changes introduced since first implementation of the Act. Some agencies were unable to report complete data responsive to the Community Policing Act for the entire year, and in some cases the quality of the data was limited. Additionally, a substantial number of smaller agencies reported so few traffic stops that it was not possible to interpret data related to driver race/ethnicity.

There are two key limitations with regard to the race/ethnicity data and analysis in this report. First, Virginia lacks a standardized mechanism for reporting the race or ethnicity of its licensed drivers. Currently, law enforcement officers must either make their own determination about a driver’s race/ethnicity (which may or may not be accurate) or ask for that information in the course of the traffic stop, which could raise constitutional concerns or escalate the perception of conflict in certain situations.

The second limitation is the inherent difficulty in accurately assessing the racial/ethnic distribution of the actual driver population in a given jurisdiction. Drivers often cross county and state lines, resulting in a racial distribution for the driving population that is different from the distribution of the jurisdiction’s population. Analysis in this report is broken out by 1) all traffic stops regardless of the driver’s residency, 2) Virginia residents, and 3) residents of the local jurisdiction. See the Findings section for examples of how accounting for residency can impact the results.