Drug arrests of Blacks stem from proactive stops while White arrests are reactive

Evidence

Lynch (2011), in a study of policing in Cleveland, Ohio, found that police chose to focus their attention and resources on illicit drug activity in majority Black neighborhoods and on crack cocaine instead of other drugs that were available in the city. They also rewarded police officers for making felony drug arrests by providing overtime pay for officers required to testify in such cases, but no such resources were provided for misdemeanor drug arrests. Likewise, Gaston (2019) found that, in St. Louis, Missouri, drug offenses committed by Blacks and in predominantly Black neighborhoods were revealed by proactive, discretionary police actions, such as Terry stops, and these actions were based on factors such as neighborhood crime/disorder, ambiguous citizen behaviors deemed suspicious, or searches incident to arrest for minor violations. By contrast, drug arrests in White neighborhoods and of Whites generally were the result of reactive police activities (e.g., responding to citizen’s calls for service). — Joseph Avery, Jim Sidanius, Joel Cooper, Gregory Davis, Amanda N., Bias in the Law, 1067

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to scholarship on how policing is driven by discretionary proactive vs reactive enforcement patterns, echoing the racial-profiling literature in the War on Drugs. — connects to: Drug-war arrests and imprisonment fell disproportionately on Black Americans — Lawrence M. Friedman and Grant M. Hayden, American Law: An Introduction, 1435
• SEED: Angle: the incentive structure (overtime pay only for felony arrests) directly shapes which neighborhoods and which drugs police target — enforcement targeting is financially incentivized, not merely biased.