SF Chronicle Analysis Finds Racial Disparities in 2024 SFPD Stop Data

Black residents in San Francisco County were stopped by Sheriff's Department officers at a rate 7.5 times higher than white residents in 2024, according to a data analysis that draws on stop records submitted by nearly 400 California law enforcement agencies under state law.

The San Francisco County Sheriff's Department recorded 386 total stops last year. When measured as stops per 10,000 residents, those stops fell on Black people at a dramatically disproportionate rate compared to white people. The department has submitted this detailed stop data to the state since 2021.

The disparities extend beyond who gets stopped. The data also reveal significant differences in whether stops result in enforcement actions such as arrests, a pattern that has intensified a statewide debate over pretextual stops: the practice in which officers use minor infractions, often traffic violations, to probe for guns, drugs, and other larger crimes.

On use of force, the Racial and Identity Profiling Act board's analysis of 2024 statewide stop data found that law enforcement officers across California used lethal and less-lethal force most frequently against people they perceived as Black or multiracial. Lethal force, which consists of firing a gun, occurred in a small fraction of a percentage of stops. Less-lethal force encompasses pointing a firearm, deploying non-lethal weapons, and bites from police dogs. The San Francisco County Sheriff's Department used lethal or less-lethal force on fewer than 10 people during stops in 2024.

The underlying legal framework dates to California Assembly Bill 953, known as the Racial and Identity Profiling Act. SFPD officers have collected stop data since July 1, 2018, recording the elements of each stop, the circumstances, and the perceived identity characteristics of individuals stopped. That information flows quarterly to the California Department of Justice and is published publicly through DataSF and the SFPD's Stop Data Dashboards, in compliance with the department's policy directive DGO 9.07. Four interactive dashboards are available to the public: Total Number of Stops, Searches, and Bookings; Reasons for a Stop or Search and Resulting Actions; Officer Initiated and Public Calls for Service; and Population and Stops.

The Chronicle's interactive project, updated March 24, is customizable, allowing readers to search stop data by agency across nearly 400 departments statewide, including the San Francisco Police Department, the Alameda County Sheriff's Department, and the California Highway Patrol.