Racial disparities in Vermont traffic policing that had narrowed during the pandemic have returned to pre-Covid levels and are even worsening in some communities, according to updated traffic stop data.
The latest report, published this month by University of Vermont economist Stephanie Seguino and two co-authors, found that while Vermont officers are making fewer stops and conducting fewer searches than their 2017 peak, the race of the driver continues to shape who gets pulled over and whose vehicle gets searched.
The report further found that the percentage of searches in which contraband is found for Black and Hispanic drivers continues to be lower than for white drivers, a key indicator of biased policing, according to the researchers.
“The reality is that those improvements have not been persistent. They’ve not been permanent,” Seguino said. “In many ways, we’ve returned to the racial disparities that existed prior to Covid.”
In Bennington, Brattleboro and Rutland, police stopped Black drivers at double their share of the driving population — or more — from 2022 to 2024, a disparity that had briefly eased during the pandemic but has since returned.
Statewide, drivers thought to be Hispanic were stopped at a rate 30% greater than their share of the driving population. The disparities are greatest in Bennington, where Hispanic drivers are stopped at almost three times their share of the driving population, and in Williston, where Hispanic drivers are stopped at almost double their share, according to the report.
Bennington and Williston also have the highest stop rates statewide per 1,000 residents, at a rate that is four times greater than the national average, according to the report.
Although Black drivers are 40% more likely to be searched than white drivers, the report notes that the racial disparities in search rates for Black and Hispanic drivers as compared to white drivers have decreased. In fact, the report finds the search rate for Hispanic drivers did not just drop but converged with the search rates of white drivers by 2024, according to the report.
Police departments contacted for comment did not respond.
The abbreviated report updates previous findings by adding 2024 traffic stop data and analyzes traffic policing and racial disparities from 2015 to 2024. Seguino’s co-authors of the report are Nancy Brooks, a professor at Cornell University, and Pat Autilio, an independent data analyst who works at the Vermont Racial Justice Alliance.
Autilio said he is hesitant to speculate on what the data means. It is interesting, he said, that the racial disparities persist despite the declining numbers of stops and searches.
“More people of color are getting searched, and police are finding fewer contraband. It’s still the case, and that doesn’t seem to get better,” he said.
A dip in the numbers
Part of a decade-long effort to track traffic stops across Vermont, the latest update also indicates that law enforcement stopped fewer vehicles and conducted fewer searches in 2024.
Statewide, the data shows that the percentage of stopped vehicles that officers searched fell by half since the peak in 2017. But while the number of searches has declined, the so-called hit rate, or the searches that led to contraband being found, has also declined, implying fewer successful or productive searches, according to the study.
“There’s clearly been a change in traffic policing in Vermont, in which there are fewer stops overall, and there are fewer searches overall. This is potentially a good thing,” said Seguino, who has been tracking traffic trends in Vermont since 2014.
Christoper Brickell, executive director of the Vermont Criminal Justice Council, said there are other factors that are missing from the data, which leads to more questions than answers for law enforcement.
“The one takeaway that I have from it that is undeniable is the hit rate difference,” he said. “What I don’t think it takes into account are things like what leads up to a search.”
A former police officer, Brickell said certain conditions need to exist for an officer to be able to search a vehicle. A search could take place with consent from the driver or following an arrest, or officers could execute a search warrant granted on probable cause that may or may not find something.
“So I think the hit rate alone just doesn’t tell you much of anything,” he said. “In order to dig deeper into why that hit rate is what it is, you really need to know how those searches were done.”
Collecting the data is productive, but how it should be seen or used puts the burden on stretched police departments that don’t have the staff or means to analyze it, he said.
“Everything that I read every year just raises more questions to me,” he said. “I really feel like those are conversations that should take place between the data researchers and law enforcement, who I think want answers as well.”
Jordan Souder, policy advocate at the American Civil Liberties Union of Vermont, said the 10-year data continues to be concerning.
“What Professor Seguino’s latest traffic study shows, and her research has repeatedly confirmed, is that racial profiling is a stubborn reality in Vermont — as people of color in our state know all too well,” Souder said in an email.
The ACLU has long advocated for smarter traffic stops legislation to reduce overpolicing and racial profiling on roadways, he said. But lawmakers have not passed legislation.
Bills H.176 and S.257 last year languished in committee. This year’s effort, S.144, is in the Senate Judiciary Committee. It aims to prohibit stops for equipment violations and consent-based searches without probable cause.
“State leaders must take responsibility for ending these baseless fishing expeditions and ensure local law enforcement agencies stop unfairly targeting people based on the color of their skin,” Souder said.
Pretextual stops
The data collected around pretextual stops, which are when police pull over a driver for a minor traffic violation as a pretext to investigate a hunch about a more serious crime, varies widely across Vermont, the report notes.
Across Vermont and the country, law enforcement officers and agencies have discretion as to whom they stop and ticket. Such stops disproportionately target people of color, due to negative stereotypes that have proven to be inaccurate, according to the researchers.
The term sounds nefarious, but pretextual stops are legal, Brickell said.
“If a pretextual stop is a lawful stop, that’s a prosecutor’s discretion. It doesn’t mean that it was wrong or that it was bad,” he said.
While pretextual stops have declined and now comprise 19% of all stops compared to 24% in 2019, the study notes that enforcement varies greatly across Vermont.
In southern Vermont, for instance, the data indicates that pretextual stops in Rutland comprise one third of all reasons for stopping a car, compared with 7.3% in Brattleboro, which the researchers say, does fewer pretextual stops as a share of all stops.
Rutland and Williston have had significantly higher rates of pretextual stops than other communities, although those rates have fallen since Covid.
The percentage of potentially pretextual stops has also dipped since 2019, more so for Black than white drivers.
“This is noteworthy, given that pretextual stops have been observed to disproportionately target drivers of color,” the report states.
Mia Schultz, president of the Rutland NAACP, called for legislative action in light of the “alarming” racial disparities in traffic policing in Rutland, one of Vermont’s largest cities. That includes limiting low-level traffic stops as a primary reason for police contact, stronger public reporting, and measurable action to reduce disparities, she said in an email.
Black drivers in Rutland were stopped at more than double their share of the driving population between 2022 and 2024. “That should concern everyone, whether or not they have ever been pulled over. Equal protection under the law has to mean something on the roadside too,” she said.
“The NAACP has long made clear that public safety and civil rights cannot be separated, and that accountability, transparency, and an end to racial profiling are necessary parts of any serious public safety conversation.”
Vermont’s Criminal Justice Council is always looking for data as an information point, said Karen Tronsgard-Scott, who is on the council. The data collected over the years has been imperfect and inconsistently used across communities, she said, although it’s getting better.
“But I want to know what barriers there are for police to be collecting this information consistently,” she said.
“We thought that we would be able to get some uniformity and consistency around data collection on a local level, and then that way, we would be able to use that information to guide us to create policies that created a more equitable approach to policing in our state.”
Much has changed in a decade, she said, from police departments initially stonewalling the effort to a greater willingness to share and examine the data.
“There’s been a generational shift in leadership in our law enforcement community. I would say that the majority — not all — of law enforcement leaders today are really invested in doing better and really examining the biases that naturally occur in our society and are reflected in law enforcement agencies,” she said.
Meanwhile, one statewide data point has not moved much.
Even though the number of traffic stops per 1,000 residents fell by almost half from 2017 to 2024, Vermont law enforcement agencies continue to stop vehicles at more than three times the national average of 52 per 1,000 residents, according to the report.
“It is noteworthy that even with these declines, law enforcement in Vermont stops drivers at three times the national rate,” said Seguino. “So it raises the question: Is this the best use of police resources?”
Brickell questions whether that is a fair comparison.
“We’re a rural state that doesn’t have mass transportation. Is it fair to assess the rate of traffic stops based on population and geography to the nationwide law enforcement agencies? I don’t know. I’m not a researcher.”
