The latest study in an ongoing effort to track traffic stops across Vermont indicates that Black, Hispanic and Asian drivers continue to be disproportionately targeted, even though the number of stops have significantly decreased since the COVID-19 pandemic.

Black drivers were stopped by police at a rate 30% higher than would be expected given their share of the driving population, and Hispanic drivers were stopped at double their share of the driving population. 

Police have increasingly stopped Asian drivers, according to the 2022-23 data examined in the latest update to the report by Stephanie Seguino, economics professor at the University of Vermont, Cornell professor Nancy Brooks and Pat Autilio, an independent data analyst  who works at the Vermont Racial Justice Alliance.

In general, data shows that Vermont police stop cars at a higher rate than other states around the country.

“Even though traffic stops have fallen almost 50% (since the pandemic) we are still stopping cars at two-and-a-half times the rate of the national average of traffic stops in Vermont,” Seguino said this week. 

The researchers have been studying race data that law enforcement agencies have been required by statute to collect since 2014. The April 2025 study updates previous findings using traffic stop data from 2022 to 2023 to determine whether race still influences officers’ decisions in Vermont traffic policing.

According to the 2022-23 data, law enforcement agencies stopped almost 50% fewer vehicles compared with 2015-19. The report states that traffic stops statewide fell from more than 170,000 in 2019 to about 75,000 in 2021 but showed a bump in 2023 to almost 93,000.

But the stop rate for Vermont continues to exceed the national stop rate by almost 2 ½ times. Where the national average dropped to 52 per 1,000 residents. Vermont’s stop rate in 2022-23 was almost 2.5 times higher at 133 per 1,000 residents, the study noted.

At a time when many police departments are struggling with staff shortages, Seguino said traffic stops may not need to be such a priority.

“A really interesting question is, just how useful are traffic stops? How necessary are they? Are they the best use of police resources?” Seguino said.

Across Vermont and the country, law enforcement officers and agencies have great discretion as to who they stop and then, who they ticket, according to the report. The pretextual traffic stops occur when an officer stops a vehicle for a minor infraction on a hunch to investigate suspected illegal behavior, such as drugs. Such stops disproportionately target people of color, due to negative stereotypes that have proven to be inaccurate, according to the researchers.

Pretextual stops have been of concern because they are more susceptible to racial bias than safety-related stops, the study notes. 

When Seguino first presented the first UVM study confirming racial bias in car searches in 2015, many law enforcement agencies took issue with her findings.  Continued statewide analyses released in 2017 and 2021 have led to deeper discussions of racial bias in policing and led to training at some Vermont law enforcement agencies.

The study, now in its 10th year, can cause discomfort but provides a basis for “extremely important discussions in Vermont concerning racial disparities in policing,” said EtanNasreddin-Longo, co-director of Vermont State Police’s Fair and Impartial Policing Committee, in a May 1 University of Vermont press release.

Studies like this led the Chittenden County State’s Attorney’s Office in 2022 to stop pursuing charges in cases where evidence of a crime was collected during non-safety-related traffic stops, a move adopted by many other states across the country.

That may be why the state’s largest law enforcement agencies saw declines in potentially pretextual stops in 2022-23. Although sheriff’s departments registered increases, the Chittenden County Sheriff ’s Department’s rate registered a marked drop in pretextual stops from 9.9% of all stops in 2021-22 to just under 1% in 2022-23, according to the report.

Seguino, who has supported that move, said police are supposed to enforce public safety and, while pretextual stops are not illegal, they are often conducted on the basis of bias, which leads to racial disparities evident in the data collected.

“Although the disparity has decreased, police continue to search Black and Hispanic drivers at almost double the rate of white drivers,” noted co-author Nancy Brooks, an economics professor at Cornell University, in the press release. 

While disparities have decreased and arrest rates have dropped in recent years, the 2022-23 data indicated Black drivers in Vermont were still 21% more likely to be arrested than white drivers during a traffic stop. Additionally, Black drivers were almost twice as likely to be searched as white drivers, according to the study.

“The proportion of searched Black drivers found with contraband was a third lower than for white drivers in 2023, the largest state-level difference we have seen in our years of analyses — and an indication of racial bias in the decision to search,” she added.

Meanwhile, “hit” rates — the percentage of traffic stop searches in which contraband is found — of Black, Hispanic and Asian drivers were close to or equal to the hit rate of white drivers during the pandemic, indicating that fewer stops perhaps resulted from officers’ biases. But progress was short-lived, the report found, “with evidence of greater racial bias in the decision to search Black drivers in 2023 as the relative hit rate fell significantly.”

While the 70 or so police departments across Vermont vary greatly in how and how many traffic stops are conducted, overall, the rate of potentially pretextual stops has remained flat throughout the three time periods reviewed by the researchers. But, the study noted, the rate increased for sheriff’s departments and decreased for most police departments.

In Brattleboro, Vt., Norma Hardy — Vermont’s only Black female police chief —  is aware of how policing bias can target and harm marginalized people. She said her department has tried to minimize that by giving people warnings rather than citations for minor issues like a broken tail light, and provide drivers enough time to fix it. “I’m a big believer in that,” she said.

“When we’re doing stops, it’s for safety, not for punitive measures. And so we do discuss that with our officers,” said Hardy.

With many residents living close to or below the poverty line, a growing refugee population and new young drivers, Hardy said she preferred to give warnings or call a parent in the case of young drivers in an effort to teach rather than punish. “So we try to be as more community minded as we can,” she added.

A comparison of Brattleboro and Rutland in the study, for example, indicated that pretextual stops comprised one-third of all the traffic stops in Rutland compared with less than 7% of all stops in Brattleboro.

The authors of the study have long advocated for legislation to reduce the frequency of pretextual stops by police without just cause and limit issuing tickets unless there is basis for a suspected violation, in an effort to lower racial disparities in traffic stops and searches that are both inequitable and inefficient.

Lawmakers introduced a bill that would have accomplished those goals last year but it did not go anywhere.

“This bill is needed because racial disparities in traffic policing continue in Vermont, despite the 2014 legislation requiring law enforcement agencies to collect race data in traffic stops. Further, Vermont law enforcement agencies stop drivers of any race at more than double (and, in some cases, triple) the national rate,” Seguino said in her testimony last session at the House Judiciary Committee in favor of H.176. 

The bill was reintroduced in the Senate Judiciary Committee last month by Sens. Tanya Vyhovsky, P/D-Chittenden Central, and Martine Gulick, D-Chittenden-Central, but S.144 has no hearings scheduled this session and is unlikely to advance.

In an email Thursday, Gulick wrote she is “very concerned” about her Black, Indigenous and constituents of color “being unfairly targeted by traffic stops” as evidenced by the years long study. 

“With the Trump administration illegally kidnapping and disappearing legal residents and migrant workers from Vermont, these stops take on an even more disturbing potential impact on Vermonters, one that could impact their safety and security in ways not previously seen,” she wrote. “We need to do all we can to keep Vermonters safe from racial profiling, from the prison pipeline and from horrific Trump policies.”

In the context of current national politics and a crackdown on immigration affecting people of color and marginalized groups across the nation, Seguino said “it is important for us to not lose sight of this issue here in Vermont.”