Latinos and African Americans are more likely to lose their driver’s license for unpaid parking tickets than others, a new study shows. According to the Los Angeles Times, a report released Monday by the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area says Latinos and African Americans are also more likely to be arrested for driving with a suspended license.
The report looks at data from 15 police and sheriff’s departments, the U.S. Census Bureau, and California DMV records.
The Times reports that African Americans in LA County make up 9.2% of the population but made up 33% of those arrested for driving with a suspended license from Sept. 2013 to Sept. 2015. Whites account for 26.8% of LA County’s population but only made 14.8% of those arrested for driving with a suspended license during the same time period.
No specific figures were given for Latino drivers, but the report says that 85% of the 20,000 people arrested by the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department for driving with suspended licenses during that period were black and Latino.
Photo above by Flickr user davidciani/Creative Commons.
