Attorneys with the ACLU of Massachusetts have been calling for the Boston Police Department to release data on pedestrian stops since the department last did so in 2016.
Today, the data for 2019 show that little changed over three years: Black people, and specifically young black men, are most likely to be stopped.
The Field Investigation Observation (FIO) data is a collection of stops initiated when police believe they have probable cause to make an arrest, reasonable suspicion that a person is engaging in a crime, or when they believe a person has a known criminal history.
In data collected for all of 2019, the number for individual black men under age 30 stopped by police is about double the number of white people stopped overall.
As the City Council gets ready to vote on a budget that may reallocate $12 million from the BPD’s overtime budget, part of Mayor Martin Walsh’s declaration of racism as a public health emergency, these numbers are now part of the discussion among Boston youth and their community leaders.
