Tampa Police Racial Profiling Allegations Under Review by Feds

The U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Community Oriented Policing Services is stepping in to review the Tampa Police Department’s enforcement of bicycle laws in light of racial profiling allegations that have made headlines in recent days.

The COPS Office’s decision to get involved was announced Thursday.

The local police department has been under fire for a disparity of tickets handed out to cyclists who are black as opposed to white riders.

Police officers in Tampa issued 544 bike citations in 2014 alone, The Tampa Tribune reported. Of that number, 443 or about 81 percent of all bike citations written were handed out to African Americans, the paper noted. The percentage has remained largely consistent over the past decade with blacks receiving far more tickets than whites, the paper added.

Those numbers have raised the ire of local civil rights groups while also drawing attention from the Justice Department.

While the numbers are raising eyebrows, Tampa Police Chief Jane Castor insists her officers are not profiling. She and Mayor Bob Buckhorn, however, asked for the Justice Department’s involvement in the issue, Fox News reported.

“While we disagree with the implications being made, this has become a very serious issue to us. We understand the sensitivity of the community. We are looking at these bike citations and the way that they have been issued,” the network quoted Castor as saying.

The COPS Office’s probe is being conducted with a goal of identifying “whether racial disparities exist in the department’s stops and the issuance of tickets,” an email to media stated. The probe is also hoped to help “determine the reason behind any disparities, and provide recommendations to address such.”

It is unclear how soon the COPS Office will complete its review.

Castor is set to retire May 8. The new chief should be announced on Thursday.

Image via Shutterstock

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