California Policy Lab

The Racial and Identity Profiling Act (RIPA) of 2015 was enacted in order to better identify and mitigate race-based and identity-based bias in policing. The law requires California police departments to record data on stops made by police officers, including fields such as perceived identity and demographics, reasoning for stops and searches, and the outcome of each encounter. RIPA does not explicitly distinguish between vehicle or pedestrian stops.

In December of 2019, the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) RIPA Board (the Board) requested that Dr. Emily Owens of the California Policy Lab (CPL) conduct an analysis of the RIPA data and provide a report to the Board, in order to better understand any patterns that the data revealed. This report provides a place-based analysis of all stops made by the LAPD from July 2018 – October 2019.

This work has been supported, in part, by the University of California Multicampus Research Programs and Initiatives grant MRP-19-600774.