Questions are rising over crime statistics and the race of those alleged to have committed criminal offenses. Some conservative pundits and online personalities have begun asking why a number of violent criminals are classified as “White” when being arrested.
Pastor and conservative commentator Joel Webbon, who has routinely spoken out on what he believes is a fallacy over race and crime statistics in public discourse, alleges dozens of individuals were erroneously classified Caucasian or white. Webbon believes crime statistics are “skewed…against whites.”
Most recently, a pair of men from Pakistan were arrested in Utah for attempting to bomb news trucks in Salt Lake City. The arrest reports for both men, named Adeeb Ahmed Nasir and Adil Ahmed Nasir, listed them as white. (RELATED: DOJ Contemplates to Ban Transgender Gun Ownership)
While there has been little to no reporting on these statistical anomalies and how they are biased against whites, several investigations have been conducted raising the question of whether labeling non-white individuals during traffic stops and other police interactions is an effort to hide racial bias against non-whites.
An investigation by ProPublica reveals how Jefferson Parish, Louisiana deputies routinely misclassified Hispanic drivers as white on traffic tickets, making racial bias nearly impossible to track. Despite Hispanics comprising 18% of the parish’s population, records show deputies labeled almost none as Hispanic. Common Latino surnames like Lopez, Rodriguez, and Hernandez consistently appeared under “white,” mirroring a similar misclassification problem previously exposed in Texas.
Experts argue this deliberate or negligent misidentification conceals profiling and misconduct, particularly amid accusations that deputies targeted immigrants during traffic stops to aid deportations. Louisiana’s traffic stop data law, intended to curb bias, contains a loophole exempting agencies with anti-profiling policies from reporting, rendering it ineffective. While other states require robust data collection, Jefferson Parish recorded only six Hispanic stops out of more than 73,000 between 2015 and 2020, a number experts call implausible.
A USA TODAY investigation found Massachusetts police have systematically misidentified Hispanic drivers as white on traffic citations, skewing racial profiling data. Between 2014 and 2020, 28% of stops involving men with Hispanic surnames were logged as white, masking disparities in traffic enforcement. Reporters uncovered over 51,000 such cases, including towns like Saugus, where 80% of men with Hispanic names were marked white. The mislabeling inflates white stop counts while undercounting Hispanics.
For example, in Holyoke, Hispanic men’s share of stops would have risen from 25% to nearly 75% if accurately recorded. Critics argue the issue is not just poor training but deliberate erasure. Because citations lack a separate ethnicity field, officers’ perceptions decide race designations, often with little guidance. (RELATED: Engraved Ammunition with Transgender, Antifascist Messages Found in Rifle Linked to Charlie Kirk Shooting)
Advocates stress this undermines accountability and silences victims of profiling. Massachusetts courts have acknowledged racial profiling as a persistent problem but rely on flawed data. Misreporting mirrors similar findings in Texas and Florida, where Hispanic drivers were overwhelmingly recorded as white.
Experts warn that without accurate data, disparities remain hidden. Regardless of the motives on individuals in law enforcement, misclassification of race data in crime statistics undermine public confidence. This is particularly the case when victim statistics tell a different story.
According to 2018 FBI numbers, while black individuals were “overrepresented among persons arrested for nonfatal violent crimes”, whites were underrepresented. Additionally, while black individuals were responsible for 22% of single-offender incidents, crimes involving only one suspect, that number nearly doubles for multiple-offender incidents.
The Bureau’s 2019 statistics also show data that makes it difficult to identify any race-skewed patterns. For instance, while black individuals were arrested for more than half of all murders or manslaughters in 2019, nearly 7 in 10 individuals arrested for rape was white. (RELATED: Self-Described “Extremist” “Communist” Starts Left-Wing Gun Club in Wisconsin)
