MVFREE Confronts City’s Denial of MVPD Racial Profiling
Newsletter Post, November 2022
by Tammy Edmonson (contact: action@mvfree.org, subject line: Police)
“The very heartbeat of racism is denial.” — Ibram X. Kendi
Since George Floyd was murdered, the Mill Valley City Council has heard and dismissed numerous personal accounts of racial profiling in Mill Valley calling them “anecdotal” and not reflective of current police practices. The Racial and Identity Profiling Act (RIPA) now makes it possible to demonstrate empirically the scope and scale of racial disparities in law enforcement. The first year of MVPD RIPA data powerfully confirms the deep and pervasive racial disparities in Mill Valley police practices. Unfortunately, the Mill Valley City Council and Police Chief Navarro have declined to acknowledge the disparities reflected in the data thereby perpetuating the entrenched denial.
Evidence of MVPD Racial Profiling—At the October 3 Mill Valley City Council Meeting, the MVFREE Police Team presented a detailed Analysis and Report based on MVPD RIPA data from June 1, 2021 through May 31, 2022. Using the same method of analysis employed by the RIPA Board, we found that Black people were stopped in Mill Valley at 6.5 times the rate of Whites; Latinx people were stopped at over 3 times the rate of Whites; and Mill Valley community members called the police about Black people at nearly 20 times the rate they did about Whites. In most of these stops, police found no cause for citation or arrest.
This pattern of MVPD detention disparities—with Black people facing the harshest treatment followed by Latinx people—persisted across every quarter of the year and at all times of day. The same pattern appeared in MVPD search rates and patrol car detentions, in the duration of detentions, in officer-initiated calls and in community members’ calls for service.
Police Chief Navarro Skirts Evidence of Racial Profiling—The Mill Valley Police Chief has been working with the MVFREE Police Team to institute anti-bias policies, training and practices. But when called upon to report publicly to the Council on the significance of the RIPA data, he avoided addressing the central pertinent question: does the data show that Black and Latinx people are treated differently from White people by the MVPD? Instead, Chief Navarro presented a variety of irrelevant and speculative tangents.
It was theoretically possible, Chief Navarro suggested, that if huge and disproportionate numbers of Black and Latinx people visited Mill Valley every day, it could elevate police detention rates for those racial groups. This facially implausible speculation about Mill Valley as a mecca for Black and Brown visitors is unsupported by any evidence.
Perhaps, Chief Navarro offered, instead of comparing MVPD detention rates by race to City demographics as prescribed by the RIPA Board, Mill Valley should compare its detention rates to County demographics. Chief Navarro neglected to point out, however, that by either benchmark, the MVPD was detaining Black and Latinx people at disproportionately high rates.
Chief Navarro also asserted that preliminary data summaries from other police agencies in Marin suggested that racial detention disparities might be worse in some other jurisdictions than in Mill Valley. However, this is a poor defense of the practice in Mill Valley.
City Council Similarly Evades Demonstrated Racial Disparities—Council members latched on to Chief Navarro’s speculation about Black and Brown visitors to Mill Valley and chose to ignore the deep racial disparities shown in the MVPD RIPA data. No one—in or out of City government—has questioned a single calculation or conclusion in MVFREE’s Analysis and Report, nor has anyone challenged our application of the formula prescribed by the RIPA Board. And yet the Council chose to make “perfecting” the RIPA data analysis the central focus of its October 3 Meeting.
Council member Burke repeatedly pressed for the City to employ a consultant to re-analyze the RIPA data. Council member Carmel similarly stressed the importance of “precise” disparity measurements. While disregarding the MVPD RIPA data for its intended purpose—as a measure of racial disparities in policing—Council member Carmel claimed the data did support his repeated assertion that Mill Valley police were not detaining and citing enough people regardless of race. (Our reading of the data suggests, to the contrary, that Mill Valley police are detaining too many people and are doing so without justification: MVPD RIPA data shows that in well over half of all detentions police find no cause for citation or arrest.)
Council’s Limited Racial Awakening—MVFREE had urged the Council to publicly acknowledge the problem of racial profiling by the MVPD as a first step toward eliminating it. For Council, this was a bridge too far. Instead, Council members took turns acknowledging the existence of “implicit bias in our community,” some going so far as to admit that “all of us” harbor implicit biases.
Having refused to recognize the existence of racial disparities in Mill Valley policing, the Council naturally declined to consider any of the RIPA-recommended anti-bias measures that MVFREE had proposed.
The Council ultimately did issue two directions to staff aimed at peripheral matters: (1) Council member Perrey asked the City Manager Cusimano and Police Chief Navarro to explore ways of making the civilian complaint process more credible and accessible; and (2) Council member Carmel asked Chief Navarro to “look into” racial disparities in the duration of detentions. We will follow up with Chief Navarro on these matters and will continue to analyze and publicize the MVPD RIPA data.
What is Next?—MVFREE’s analysis of racial disparities in Mill Valley policing and our presentation to the City Council were the subject of articles in the Pacific Sun, the SF Chronicle and the Marin IJ. In the wake of this news coverage, Chief Navarro and City Manager Cusimano have signaled a willingness to meet and work with us to identify and implement racial equity policies and practices. How the City can confront racial profiling while continuing to deny its existence remains to be seen.