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Hutto police report shows 18% rise in traffic stops; one profiling complaint found unfounded
Summary
Police Chief Jeff Yarbrough told council the department made about 11,823 traffic stops in the reporting period (an ~18% increase) and opened one formal racial-profiling complaint that investigators found to be unfounded after bodycam review.
Jeff Yarbrough, Hutto police chief, presented the city's annual racial-profiling report required by state law. He said the department recorded 11,823 traffic stops this year compared with 10,117 last year, an approximately 18% increase. Yarbrough noted most stops occurred on city streets rather than highways and emphasized the agency's policies prohibiting bias-based policing, supervisor reviews of body-worn video and a professional-standards complaint process.
Yarbrough described the single formal complaint in the reporting cycle: a motorist stopped for a seat-belt violation who alleged the stop was motivated by race. He said the professional-standards unit conducted a comprehensive investigation, reviewed bodycam footage and found "nothing to suggest that the stop was related to the individual's race." The chief also told council the department is expanding analytic capacity to study trends year-to-year and better explain why citation rates differ across demographic groups.
