Overview
- Cleveland hired Sigma Squared on a one-year, $289,000 contract to analyze 2024 traffic and investigatory stops and searches.
- Sigma Squared, led by Harvard economist Roland Fryer, reported no evidence of bias based on hit-rate and threshold tests, even as minorities made up a larger share of those stopped.
- The firm is building a near real-time dashboard for Chief Dorothy Todd and command staff to track stop outcomes and adjust deployment.
- A 2023 analysis by The Marshall Project and News 5 found Black drivers were searched more than three times as often as White drivers despite similar contraband discovery rates.
- Researchers have questioned the limits of hit-rate and threshold tests, the city has not yet released the underlying 2024 data, and federal monitors are expected to publish their own assessment in the coming weeks.