Nassau Police Say “Non-Residents” Are Causing Racial Disparity In Enforcement — Data Suggest Otherwise

It was an unprecedented release of data compared to what the Nassau County Police Department typically makes available. Late last month, the public got a detailed look at arrest numbers, traffic stops, pat downs, and other police interactions — revealing sharp racial disparities in law enforcement. 

Just under half of this Long Island county’s population identifies as non-white — including Black, Latino, Asian and other categories. And yet, according to the new topline arrest data, those demographic groups made up a full two-thirds of people arrested by Nassau police.

At a hearing last week, Nassau County Police Commissioner Patrick Ryder told local lawmakers it was “unfair” to draw conclusions about the arrest data because 35% of those arrested came from outside the county, which includes neighboring parts of New York City and Suffolk County.

“They're not part of the county of Nassau,” Ryder told lawmakers. “They came here to commit some kind of criminal act.“

But an analysis of the data by WSHU and WNYC/Gothamist found that racial disparities persisted independent of whether the person who was stopped, summonsed, or arrested by police resided in Nassau County or elsewhere, providing a more granular view into how police interact with the public than the raw data offers.

Read more at Gothamist.com