![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/CAC5UC3LWXFUIUHJH2VU0PIVGLGUAOCXFBBS3W0WNQL5EGGU.jpg?resize=540%2C540&ssl=1\")
<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\nIn 2021, more than 55% of all drivers pulled over by a Lakeland police officer identified as Black, Hispanic, or another racial minority, according to an annual report from LPD’s Office of Professional Standards.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
People of color\u00a0make up less than 28% of Lakeland’s population according to\u00a02020 U.S. Census data.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Chief Taylor, said he doesn\u2019t feel a \u201csimple comparison\u201d of the city\u2019s population to traffic-stop demographics is fair.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe don\u2019t know how many people come into the city every day,\u201d Taylor said. \u201cAbout 100,000 people come into the city Monday to Friday during business hours. We don\u2019t know the demographics coming into the city.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Taylor said that in his 35 years serving Lakeland Police Department, he has never heard an officer say they took specific action because of an individual\u2019s race. The chief admitted the decision-making process is often not spoken about.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI\u2019m not naive. We hire from the human race. Everyone comes in with some bias. It\u2019s human nature,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Taylor said the department receives a low number of citizen complaints regarding officers’ behavior given its approximately 240-member force. It reported 15 complaints per year in 2020 and 2021, with slightly more than 22 complaints in 2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Lakeland police receive comprehensive training on bias-based policing in the state’s police academy, a roughly six-month-long program new officers must attend and pass.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The department follows this up with annual bias-based police training for each officer based on the department’s own policies, Taylor said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Black and Hispanic drivers are more likely to be pulled over for a traffic stop in Lakeland than white drivers, despite being in the minority. When pulled over, there’s a… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":31683,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"0","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","inline_featured_image":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"dois","default_image_id":71799,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[12,14],"tags":[4879],"class_list":["post-31682","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local","category-news","tag-data-shows-lpd-could-be-biased-against-black-and-hispanic-drivers"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31682","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31682"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31682\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31683"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31682"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31682"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31682"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/taylor.jpg?resize=1024%2C576&ssl=1\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n