Traffic stop policy in Ramsey County, MN

This report is the result of a collaborative effort between the Ramsey County Attorney's Office (RCAO), the Saint Paul Police Department (SPPD), the Ramsey County Emergency Communications Center (ECC), and Justice Innovation Lab (JIL) to assess the impact of RCAO and police department policies and practices, implemented in 2021, aimed at reducing traffic stops unrelated to public safety concerns. Code for cleaning and analyzing the data used in this report can be found in the JIL GitHub repository for public materials.

The analyses documented in the report provide evidence that reducing use of non-public-safety traffic stops reduces racial disproportionalities without negatively impacting crime rates. Overall, the data analyses indicate that the new traffic stop policy was successful in reducing minor, non-safety-related vehicle violation stops, that this reduction resulted in a narrowing of racial differences in traffic stops and searches, and that the policy had no discernible effect on crime rates.

In addition to this work, JIL is collaborating with university researchers to conduct further analysis of the effect of these policies using more complex statistical modeling. This work will be specifically focused on SPPD data.