D.C. police officers conduct warrantless searches—known as a “stop and frisk”—that disproportionately impact Black people in D.C., a new report from the American Civil Liberties Union finds. 

Although Black people make up about 44 percent of the District’s population, they accounted for about 70 percent of police stops in 2022 and ’23. Only about 12 percent of stops involved White people, who make up about 39 percent of the city’s population.

The report from the ACLU’s D.C. chapter, which analyzed data released by the Metropolitan Police Department, also finds that the racially disproportionate police stops are an ineffective tactic for sniffing out illegal guns. According to the report, of the 68,244 stops in 2022, less than 1 percent resulted in a gun seizure. Of the 68,561 stops in 2023, 1.2 percent resulted in a gun seizure. 

“If the goal of stops is to reduce crime overall then I think we need to question whether this is the most effective practice to facilitate greater community safety,” ACLU-D.C. Policy Advocacy Director Scarlett Aldebot tells City Paper.

In a statement provided to NBC Washington, an MPD spokesperson disputes the ACLU’s conclusion about the effectiveness of the use of stop and frisk (which MPD refers to as a “protective pat down”). MPD says that only 4,471 of the nearly 69,000 stops included a frisk.

But a City Paper analysis of the department’s stop data found that while the number of police stops resulting in frisks (or pat downs) are relatively small compared to the number of overall stops, officers are much more likely to search Black people. More than 90 percent of frisks involve Black suspects.

MPD also points out that officers take action other than seizing firearms. For example, 58 percent of stops result in a ticket and 23 percent result in an arrest, according to the department’s data.

The ACLU’s recent analysis is its third report on stop-and-frisk data. MPD is required to release the information under D.C. law but for years refused to do so. The ACLU filed a lawsuit in 2021 to force the public release of the data.

This lawsuit compelled the department to begin publishing stop data on a dedicated page of its website as part of the District’s Open Data initiatives. Using this information, the ACLU published reports in 2020 and 2021 that outline officers’ excessive stopping of Black people in the District. The data for 2022 and 2023, released earlier this year, reveals that the trend of racial disparities in police stops has persisted.

In addition to the stop data, the ACLU’s recent report cites a 2023 cultural assessment of the department, where members of the community described their interactions with MPD officers. The assessment, conducted by the Police Executive Research Forum, cited residents from majority-Black wards 7 and 8 who said they experienced “an aggressive and disrespectful style of over-policing not seen in other wards.” 

Residents who participated in the cultural assessment also scored their level of trust in the police on a scale of 1 to 10. Those in the majority-White Second Police District gave the highest average score of 7.3; residents of the majority-Black Seventh District gave an average score of 5.0.

“What that [distrust] can create is a less safe District, where people don’t feel that they can go to the police to ask for help, or when they feel that their interaction with the police may be more harmful than helpful,” Aldebot says.

She adds that MPD has not yet contacted the ACLU to discuss its reports. But the department has been tied up in recent years with legal challenges related to the practice.

A 2020 lawsuit brought by the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund alleged that MPD officers’ use of stop and frisk largely violated people’s Fourth Amendment rights, and in many cases was carried out on the basis of race. The District paid $330,000 to settle the suit in June.

The 1968 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Terry v. Ohio determined that police officers can stop and search (or frisk) a person if they have a “reasonable suspicion” that the person is involved in criminal activity or carrying a weapon.

The practice has since been used by officers throughout the country, including infamously in New York City under Mayor Michael Bloomberg to target Black and Latine people. A judge ruled in 2013 that NYPD officers’ use of stop and frisk violated the Constitution’s Fourth Amendment, which protects against unreasonable search and seizure, and the Fourteenth Amendment, which guarantees equal protection under the law.

MPD, in its statement to NBC Washington, says 64 percent of guns recovered by the department in 2023 were obtained during police stops. MPD recovered 3,135 firearms in 2023, a slight decline from 2022, but that continues to mark an upward trend, according to MPD data.

Still, the number of gun recoveries appears to have little impact on curbing violence. The District saw an unprecedented increase in homicides last year, mostly from gun violence.

MPD even played a role in allowing some firearms to enter the community. A pandemic-era mayoral order made the department the only authorized firearm seller in the District for a short time. This led to the department finding an increasing number of firearms at crime scenes that they tracked back to themselves.