Consultant: Pflugerville's 2025 stop data show higher stop and search rates for Black and Hispanic motorists

A consultant who analyzed Pflugerville's 2025 traffic-stop data told the City Council on Tuesday that Black and Hispanic motorists were stopped and searched at rates higher than their proportions of the population, while White motorists were stopped less frequently.

Dr. Fritsch of Justice Research Consultants told the council the dataset covers all traffic stops from Jan. 1 to Dec. 31, 2025, and includes about 15 data fields per stop. He said the department recorded roughly 7,500 traffic stops in 2025 and that the report compares stop rates to city and Travis County population benchmarks (using 2020 Census numbers).

The consultant stressed substantial caveats. He said the analysis relies on census-based benchmarks that do not measure the driving population and noted officers reported knowing a motorist's race prior to a stop in only about 1.5% of Pflugerville's cases, well below statewide averages, which complicates direct conclusions about racial profiling. He recommended supervisory oversight, routine video reviews and officer-level monitoring as best practices.

Council members pressed for more granular information. The report shows differences in post-stop outcomes by race: for example, 45% of Hispanic motorists in the report received citations compared with 34% of White motorists; search rates reported for 2025 were 5.1% for White motorists, 7.8% for Black motorists, 6.9% for Hispanic motorists and 1.9% for Asian motorists. The department reported 473 searches (6.3% of stops) and 59 consent searches in 2025; the consultant said about 51% of searches found contraband, higher than a 44% state average drawn from 2024 data.

Mayor Weiss and councilors asked about possible socioeconomic drivers and whether the analysis can cross-tabulate stop type (moving, equipment, violation of law) by race. Dr. Fritsch said the agency provided aggregate summaries, not incident-level spreadsheets, so detailed cross-tabulation is limited; he offered to obtain further incident-level detail and said the department's backend (Brazos) can export more granular records for follow-up.

Chief Richards reviewed a five-year snapshot of bias-related complaints: four formal complaints in 2022 (three from one encounter) and zero substantiated bias-based complaints in other recent years. The chief and consultant also described body-worn camera use and automatic in-car triggers (lights, sirens, radar) that support supervisory review.

Council requested that staff and the consultant review the subset of probable-cause searches that produced notably different hit rates by ethnicity (about 75 cases identified in the report) and return with incident-level analysis or explanations. Dr. Fritsch and Chief Richards agreed to provide follow-up data and clarifications to the council.

The presentation was submitted to the council as required under Texas reporting rules and the city moved on to the next agenda item.