Black drivers made up the highest percentage of those stopped by Arlington police in 2025, according to an annual report from the police department.
The city saw more than 103,000 traffic stops, almost 45,000 more than in 2025 than the year prior. The increase was part of the department's efforts to make roads safer and reduce the number of fatal accidents – an effort that was successful, according to police data.
Details from the report were presented to Arlington's council on Tuesday as part of its afternoon meeting.
In addition to being the most-stopped racial demographic, Black drivers had the highest percentage of vehicle searches at 52%, followed by white drivers at 49%.
Black drivers made up 36.5% of those stopped by police and were also arrested in 4% of those traffic stops. Traffic stops with white and Hispanic or Latino drivers saw the second highest percentage of stops resulting in arrests at 2% each.
Arlington Police Chief Al Jones said the data shows Arlington is committed to constitutionally sound policing practices and racial equity.
"This report shows that our officers are effectively managing their responsibility while maintaining a positive interaction," Jones said.
The data is self-reported by Arlington police when they make a stop. The officers also report whether the stop resulted in a search, arrest, citation or verbal warning.
Assistant Police Chief Leland Strickland said the data shows officers do not make decisions about whether to stop a driver based on race.
"I think it's important to realize or to understand, in 98% of our traffic stops in the city we do not know the race of the person that we're stopping," Strickland said.
He pointed to data from traffic stops on Interstate 20, where he says officers don't have the opportunity to racially profile drivers before making a stop.
In that data taken from I-20, Black drivers made up around 37% of stops compared to that 36.5% citywide.
Council member Barbara Odom-Wesley, who represents District 8, questioned why police pulled over Black drivers that much when Black people account for 22.7% of the city's population, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
Alex del Carmen, a criminologist who analyzed Arlington's racial profiling data, said that is because not everybody stopped in Arlington is a resident of the city.
Del Carmen, who has been studying the city's data for more than two decades, pointed to the number of traffic stops that found contraband as evidence of that.
The data shows police conducted searches on vehicles driven by 2,019 Black drivers and found contraband in 1,042. Of those, police made 861 arrests.
According to Del Carmen, that indicates those searches were well founded and suggest they were not racially motivated.
He said contraband searches that are the result of bad policing would show a lower number of resulting arrests.
"However, in the case of Arlington, it's pretty clear that almost half of motor vehicle contacts with African Americans that result in searches, contraband is found," Del Carmen told Odom-Wesley. "So, in the world of civil rights, in the word of data analysis, we interpret that to be meaningful police work."
Jones, the police chief, said they received 11 complaints of racial profiling in 2025 and all were determined to be unfounded. Each complaint was investigated by the department's internal affairs division.
The investigations included reviewing body worn camera, dash camera and phone recordings.
KERA News has filed an open records request any video or audio recordings used in those investigations, as well as any reports generated in the investigations and any documents created in the process of filing a complaint of racial profiling.
Jones also said the department's racial demographics are not representative of Arlington residents' racial demographics.
"It really is not a true reflection of our community," Jones said. "But I can tell you, each and every class that we put in, we strive to make sure that we are moving towards that direction so that we can have a balanced police force."
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