Consultant: Cedar Hill traffic-stop data show high search ‘hit rate’; no racial-profiling complaints in 2025

Dr. Eric Fritch of Justice Research Consultants told the Cedar Hill City Council at its April 14 briefing that his 2025 analysis of 7,602 traffic stops found no formal racial-profiling complaints and a high success rate for searches.

"Your hit rate is 62 percent in 2025," Fritch said, summarizing the proportion of searches that yielded contraband. He told the council the department conducted searches in 6.1% of stops and that search rates varied by race: "2.6%" for White motorists, "7.8%" for Black motorists and "3.7%" for Hispanic motorists, according to the presentation.

Chief Eli Reyes, the city’s Director of Public Safety, also briefed the council on a continuation grant that would fund license-plate readers and other camera infrastructure and requested additional funding for a drone-as-first-responder program. Reyes said the drone would be mounted to the top of the government center and "self dispatch" for certain 911 calls, with an estimated response time of "approximately 2 minutes." He described existing partnerships and said the city participates in leases and grant-funded arrangements for towers and cameras.

Fritch explained the methodology and limitations of the comparative analysis required by Texas law, noting the difficulty of measuring the driving population in a metropolitan area and that 62% of motorists stopped in 2025 were not Cedar Hill residents. He also reported arrest and search context: 62% of arrests were for outstanding warrants and roughly 31% were for penal-code violations, and three of 461 searches were recorded as consent searches.

Councilmembers asked follow-up questions on the small share of stops where officers know a driver’s race before the stop (about "1.7%" in the presentation), on why arrest rates were elevated and on statewide trends in data collection and oversight. Fritch said most arrests for outstanding warrants reflect limited officer discretion and noted ongoing work with Texas Commission on Law Enforcement reporting standards.

The presentation and the police grant items were presented during the briefing; Council will consider the formal grant-application resolution and related consent items at the council meeting that followed the briefing. The briefing ended without a substantive vote on the grant items.

Quotes in this article come from the council briefing transcript and are attributed to the speakers who made them: Dr. Eric Fritch (presentation) and Chief Eli Reyes (grant and drone overview).