Duluth Police Department Releases Demographic Disparity Analysis Results

DULUTH, Minn. – The Duluth Police Department held a public forum Wednesday addressing the results from the Demographic Disparity Analysis.

The analysis was done by a third party researcher, Bob Scales from Police Strategies LLC, to better understand data and recognize demographic disparities the department may be partaking in.

The DPD decided to do the study after the NAACP called them out for having disparities in stops and arrests, as there was a concern that specific races were being targeted more than others.

Chief Mike Tusken says that findings of this report will be used to improve what the department does with hopes of impacting the community in a positive way.

“Primarily the strength of out organization is always going to be the people that we serve with and so whenever there is a concern about how we are doing our policing we need to stop and reflect. It’s great to do a study, great to do analysis to better understand it so you can improve upon it and so that is really the reason that we had this analysis done,” DPD Police Chief Mike Tusken says.

The presentation held Wednesday along with the report, which is an extensive 172 pages long, can be found on the DPD website under the reports tab.