Analytical Memo #1

Traffic Stops in Montana County

Since 2000 the Montana County Sheriff's Department has instituted a special team of officers to apprehend drug dealers and drug couriers along a major interstate that runs through the Northwest portion of the county. Recently, representatives of the local chapter of the NAACP in Montana County have approached the Sheriff and other representatives of the county claiming that the special unit is bias against black vehicle occupants.

In particular, NAACP representatives have argued that a higher frequency of black vehicle occupants have been stopped as opposed to non-black vehicle occupants. Moreover, the NAACP representatives claim that, in some cases, a higher frequency of black vehicle occupants have had property seized as opposed to non-black vehicle occupants. In an effort to avoid a potential lawsuit (which could be politically damaging to the Sheriff who is up for re-election, and who captured well over 57 percent of the black vote in his last election), the Sheriff requests that the Department's data division investigate the nature of the traffic stops.

As an analyst in the Department's data division, you are charged with examining all traffic stops made by the special unit between 2000 and 2003 stored in an SPSS system file (file name is--vehiclestops.sav). All traffic stops by race of occupant were obtained from video monitors located in the cruisers of each officer. Seizure of property is also stored in the dataset by traffic stop as well.

Your role as the analyst is twofold: (1) to determine if the outcome of the traffic stops based on the claims by the NAACP is random ( i.e., due to chance); and (2) to determine if the race of the occupant contributes to a higher than expected frequency of property seizures.

Price: $10.6

Solution: The downloadable solution consists of 4 pages, 660 words and 4 charts.
Deliverable: Word Document