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Brazos Co. Sheriff's Office reports zero racially profiled traffic stops in 2023

Brazos Co. Sheriff's Office reports zero racially profiled traffic stops in 2023
Posted at 6:15 PM, Mar 11, 2024
and last updated 2024-03-12 11:47:54-04

BRAZOS COUNTY, Texas — The Brazos County Sheriff's Office reports it had no complaints of racial profiling in 2023.

Sheriff Wayne Dicky said reporting this data is the law and this outcome comes from training being put it into action.

"First in their academy training, they receive education about what racial profiling is and how to avoid it and we do continuing training on how to avoid racial bias" he said.

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Deputy Nathan Dennis helps patrol Brazos County and said discrimination has no place out here or in their department.

"None of us are going to work with somebody that would racial profile," he said.

Out of 6,525 traffic stops last year, around 2.5% of those stops did deputies acknowledge they knew the driver's race before the stop.

Most traffic stops happened on county roads involving white males.

Across the board, white people were arrested 74 times, Hispanic/Latino people arrested 58 times and black people arrested 51 times.

There was also no reports of physical force resulting in bodily injury used during the stop.

J.R. Gonzales is with the Texas Association of Mexican American Chambers of Commerce.

As someone connected with communities around him, he said complaints could sometimes go unreported.

He said, "the fact that there's zero complains, I always give a little pause on that and double check that just to make sure that's correct and it may very well be. My concern is under SB4."

By law, Dr. Alex Del Carmen trains Texas police chiefs on keeping racial profiling out of departments and he's done so for almost 30 years.

He said reporting data like this is in the right direction. The next step in combating racial profiling is identify racist law enforcement and getting them off the force.

"We need to know where they are but to do that we need to really a: be interested in knowing and b: use the right tools to do so."

The Brazos County Sheriff’s Office is one of the first to go ahead and publish their report.

These reports, by law, have to go to the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement by March 1st.

Staff there told me reports will be published in the coming weeks.