Racial and Identify Profiling Act (RIPA)
What is RIPA?
The Racial and Identity Profiling Act (RIPA) of 2015 (AB 953) requires state and local law enforcement agencies, as specified, to collect data regarding stops of individuals, including perceived demographic information on the person stopped, and to report this data to the California Department of Justice (DOJ) on an annual basis. Click the following link to view AB 953: The Racial and Identity Profiling Act of 2015. https://oag.ca.gov/ab953
This data collection has been implemented in a phased in approach based on the size of the police agencies. The Fairfax Police Department is to begin collecting data in January 2022. The collected data is to be reported to the Department of Justice no later than April 2023. The Department of Justice will then post the collected data to their web site sometime after April 2023. Data collection will be ongoing with submission to DOJ required no later than April of each year for the prior year’s data.
In advance of the required dates, the Fairfax Police Department began collecting data in test mode in July 2021 (six months prior to the mandate). In addition, while not required to submit data until April 2023 to the DOJ, the Fairfax Police Department has implemented a RIPA Dashboard, making collected data available to the public starting in October 2021 on our web site. The Dashboard allows users to filter Fairfax Police stop data by date, perceived race, perceived gender, reason for the stop and result of the stop.
The Dashboard is not “live data”. It will be updated at least quarterly (Jan, April, June and Sept) While the filter for a date search will allow the user to input any date span, users should remain cognizant of our quarterly upload dates. This process and the Dashboard will be evolving as we continue to refine the processes.
Without this Dashboard, the public would not be able to see our collected data until DOJ posts it sometime after April of the following year of collected data. We felt it was important to create a mechanism to provide our data to the public in a timelier manner.
What data are Fairfax Police Officers required to report for each stop, detention or search of an individual?
- Agency Identification Number (ORI) date, time, and duration of the stop
- Location of stop
- Perceived race or ethnicity of person stopped
- Perceived gender of person stopped
- Person stopped perceived to be LGBT
- Perceived age of person stopped
- Perception that person stopped has limited or no English fluency
- Perceived or known disability of person stopped
- Reason for stop
- Stop made in response to a call for service
- Actions taken by officer during stop (predesignated selections are defined by DOJ – if none of those are applicable, “none” is the answer required by DOJ).
- Results of stop
- Officer’s Identification (ID) Number
- Officer’s years of experience
- Type of assignment of officer
**All fields and selection options are designated by DOJ.
For more detailed information on reportable data click here.
How to read the RIPA Dashboard: You can utilize the filtering tools located at the top of the dashboard to refine your search results of posted data. The dashboard is not designed to nor has it the ability to display all the data that is collected, but rather to provide the public with basic stop data. When the Department of Justice posts data that will be all inclusive.
Stop Data | Available Date Span: Shows the start and end date span of available data. When using the “Filter by Date Range” option, only dates within this listed date span will show data results.
Total Number of Stops: Shows the number of individuals detained/stopped by Fairfax Police Officer.
Percentage of Stops | Perceived Race: Shows the percentages of persons stopped based on perceived race. You can place the cursor over the pie chart to see breakdown by race.
Number of Stops | Gender: Shows the number of individuals stopped by gender.
Number of Stops | Reason for Stop: The number at the top of each blue bar graph represents the number of individuals stopped by Fairfax Police Officers according to the reason for the stops.
Filtering Options: Allows for the filtering of search results.
Date of implementation: Fairfax Police Department Stop Data is generally posted quarterly in January, April, June and September. The Stop Data began being collected on July 1st, 2021. There is no stop data prior to July 1, 2021. The Dashboard was made available to the public starting in October 2021.