Ethnicity of drivers stopped 415/23

FOI Reference: 415/2023

Request:

I write to request information under the Freedom of Information Act about recording the ethnicity of drivers stopped by your police force. For clarity, I am not looking for statistics concerning stop and searches. I am only interested in traffic stops.

Specifically, I would like to know:

Has your force run any pilot schemes between 2015 and 2022 where officers were required to record drivers’ ethnicity during a traffic stop?

For reference, such a scheme was piloted by the Metropolitan Police in 2022 (www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022)

If your force ran such a scheme, please provide the information collected, of drivers stopped broken down by ethnicity. Please provide this information in Excel format.

If such a scheme has not been run, please provide any ethnic breakdown of drivers stopped by your force between 2015 and 2022. Please provide this information in Excel format.

Response:

I can confirm that there is no information held/recorded by Dyfed-Powys Police in respect of your above request as we do not currently record traffic stops, as per the trial recently conducted by the Metropolitan Police.

Please note: Dyfed Powys police does record ethnicity of individuals who have committed a traffic offence and a traffic offence report completed/submitted by a police officer.                                   

It should be noted that owing to the systems adopted by Dyfed-Powys Police in relation to the recording of such matters the information provided may or may not be accurate. It should be noted that for these reasons this Force’s response to your questions should not be used for comparison purposes with any other response you may receive.  

(This is a response under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 and disclosed on 30/05/23)