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MARS HILL, N.C. (AP) — Mars Hill Police Chief Michael Garrison says he has decided to voluntarily start collecting and reporting traffic stop demographic data to the State Bureau of Investigation.
Mars Hill University's director of cultural affairs Alaysia Black Hackett tells the Asheville Citizen-Times (http://avlne.ws/1JcNTnI) she often hears complaints from students about mistreatment based on race. Mars Hill doesn't catalog complaints or data related to race, which academics, journalists and organizations use to study racial profiling and look for signs of problems.
Garrison says he wants campus officers to act in a way that's reflective of the population. He says data collection will allow him to see the number of traffic stops by age, race and gender. It will also allow him to understand why those stops were made and the interaction with police.
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This story has been corrected to show that Mars Hill police, not the university, are collecting the data.
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Information from: The Asheville Citizen-Times, http://www.citizen-times.com
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