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In response to widespread allegations of racial and ethnic discrimination in traffic stops, a practice that has been labeled “racial profiling,” law enforcement agencies are now collecting data on traffic stops that include the race or ethnicity of drivers. Interpreting these data to determine whether a pattern of race discrimination exists poses enormous difficulties. Specifically, it is not clear what baseline (often referred to as “the denominator”) should be used to assess the racial and ethnic distribution of people stopped. Using the first traffic stop data reports from the San Jose Police Department as a case study, this paper examines baselines that are commonly used or discussed as appropriate. The paper argues that resident population data and/or official crime data are not adequate as baselines. As an alternative, the paper proposes an approach based on police early warning systems.

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This article explores citizen perceptions, goals, and expectations in filing complaints against the police. It is based on 10 focus groups representing a cross-section of a medium-sized midwestern community. Its findings confirm earlier research indicating a poor "fit" between complainant goals and complaint procedures. Although most existing complaint procedures are designed to investigate complaints of officer misconduct and to punish guilty officers, relatively few of the focus group participants indicated punishment as their goal. The majority wanted either an explanation for the incident, an apology, a face-to-face encounter with the officer, or documentation of the incident on the officer's record.

Both Vancouver, British Columbia, and Detroit, Michigan, have significant and growing urban agriculture movements. In this article, I follow recent work investigating the connection between urban agriculture and neoliberalization to determine how these local governments have used urban agriculture in narratives of economic development to selectively pursue a sustainability fix. I analyze how different regimes of local governance have influenced the urban agriculture movements, leading to local, hybridized fixes that adapt to different material and discursive contexts in each place. I argue that in both cities, urban agriculture has radical potential as a grassroots response to economic and environmental injustice, but has also been enrolled as a device by the local state in which the primary goal of sustainability planning becomes enhanced economic competitiveness. Pursuing an agenda of food justice requires examining the larger context and effects of municipal involvement with food movements.