Cohort 2025
Pillars of the Community
Addressing Effects of Racially Disparate Policing and Prosecution in San Diego
San Diego, CA
Data show that the San Diego Police Department has disproportionately stopped, searched, charged, and profiled Black and Latinx residents. In 2020, the department stopped Black people at a rate 219 percent higher than white people and used more frequent—and more severe—force against them. Overpolicing (PDF) erodes trust, increases crime, and limits communities’ economic and social opportunities. Under California’s Racial and Identity Profiling Act, law enforcement officers are required to collect and publicly report detailed data on traffic stops, including the driver’s demographics, reasons for the stop, outcomes, and location. But in San Diego, these data have not yet been thoroughly analyzed to identify racial disparities that would inform legal challenges under California’s Racial Justice Act, which allows people to contest racial bias in criminal charges, convictions, and sentencing.
With Catalyst grant funding, Pillars of the Community, in partnership with the University of California San Diego and the San Diego Public Defender’s Office, will analyze Racial and Identity Profiling Act data alongside charging and sentencing records (obtained through California Public Records Act requests) to determine whether there are patterns of racial and geographic disparities in stops, searches, and prosecutions. To contextualize the data, Pillars of the Community will interview affected community members, capturing personal stories that reflect how individuals and communities are affected by policing and prosecution policies and practices. It will share these insights with the public defender’s office to support legal challenges under the Racial Justice Act. Integrating the data and community narratives will help public defenders execute court cases that seek remedies for biased practices and equal protection violations in policing and prosecution. The project will culminate in a publicly accessible database that documents whether and where racial disparities are occurring in policing and charging practices—ensuring the findings are accessible and impactful for the public, policymakers, and advocates.
Pillars of the Community was also a Catalyst grantee in 2023. Read about its 2023 project, Addressing Racially Biased Police Stops in Southeast San Diego.
