San Francisco Police Stop Data for Racial Identity Profiling Act Compliance

San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) Stop Data captures information on police stops to comply with California's Racial and Identity Profiling Act (RIPA). The dataset includes details on stop circumstances and perceived identity characteristics of individuals, with records starting July 1, 2018. Data is submitted by officers to the California Department of Justice and published quarterly by the City of San Francisco.

Use Cases

• Analyzing stop demographics and potential bias based on perceived identity characteristics.
• Studying the circumstances and outcomes of police stops, including actions taken.
• Tracking temporal and geographic patterns of police stops in San Francisco.
• Assessing compliance with and the impact of the Racial and Identity Profiling Act (RIPA).

Strengths

• Data collection is mandated by state law (AB 953/RIPA), suggesting a formal collection process.
• Includes text descriptions for coded fields like offense and action codes, which likely aids usability.
• Records have a temporal coverage starting from a specific date: July 1, 2018.
• Data is updated on a quarterly basis, providing regular refreshes.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• A certain percentage of stops cannot be geocoded due to input errors, limiting spatial analysis.

Provenance

Source

City of San Francisco, San Francisco Police Department, via California Department of Justice.

Collection Method

Officers enter data per shift into a Stop Data Collection System, which is submitted to the state and then transformed by SFPD for privacy and accuracy.

Time Range

From July 1, 2018 onward.

Freshness

Updated quarterly; last metadata update was 2026-03-22.

Geography

San Francisco, California, USA.