GREENSBORO, N.C. -- — From January 2013 to October 2015, Greensboro Police made more than 106,000 traffic stops.
At the time, A New York Times investigation found the majority of those stops involved black drivers.
The Times called it racial profiling. Fast forward two years later, and he numbers of traffic stops in Greensboro went down by about 40,000.
That's a huge drop-off.
Does that mean the ratio of black to white drivers also dropped?
Recently UNC Chapel Hill crunched numbers on traffic stops going back to the early two thousands across the state.
Greensboro Police said they changed some policies which is why the numbers went down so drastically. They did this so they could take a step back and figure out what needed to change so those numbers of black and white people being pulled over weren't so different.
So far though, those changes haven't had a huge effect. When you compare the two years before the New York Times article came out, From 2013 to 2015 to the two years after. 2015 to 2017, the number of black drivers stopped went down about 1 percent. However that still means in nearly 55 percent of all traffic stops by Greensboro Police they were stopping a black driver.
Where the numbers really stand out though, are searches once those stops happen.
Searches of black drivers and passengers have actually gone up about 5 percent.
So, of all searches done by Greensboro Police more than 77 percent of those were done to either a black driver or black passenger.
Compare that to the demographics of Greensboro. Greensboro's population is about 41 percent black, 48 percent white, and 1 percent other.
The difference between 77 percent of searches being done on black drivers and passengers, when they only make up 41 percent of the population is where the discrepancy stems from.
We did reach out to Greensboro Police about these numbers, and a spokesperson told WFMY News 2 they have been focusing on unbiased police training,
In a statement Chief Wayne Scott said "G-P-D continues to be mindful of our policies and procedures to make sure we are policing in a fair and equitable way."