New Boulder Police Data Reveals Troubling Trends
New Data Released
After four years of repeatedly asking the City of Boulder to release police data on race of people stopped and on use of force, the Boulder Police Department finally published new data last week. What was made public is not the kind of in-depth and comprehensive data dashboard we’ve seen from other local institutions like the Denver Police Department, Aurora Police Department, Boulder District Attorney’s Office, nor BVSD. Instead, it appears to be a hand-picked selection of statistics, with the disaggregated data being quite limited in nature and beginning only in 2024, leaving a data blackout on both stops-by-race after 2018 and use-of-force-by-race after 2021.
That said, this is what the limited data released do show: since data were last released, both disproportionate stops of Black and Latine residents have increased, as has use of force.
Those trends are particularly troubling given the slate of reforms Boulder City Council requested in the wake of the national spotlight Boulder received in March 2019 after its police officers pointed their firearms at Zaid Atkinson and harassed him simply because he was a Black man in Boulder picking up trash in front of his apartment building. Those reforms, which data now show have not worked, included: creation of the Police Oversight Panel (a volunteer board that is not independent and that has been repeatedly undercut by the city), installation of a new Office of Police Monitor nominally reporting to the City Manager, retraining officers using the “ICAT” protocol; and most recently, the Reinventing Policing plan.
Here’s what BPD’s latest data show:
The City of Boulder’s Black population is about 1% and the Latine population is about 11%. However in 2024, 10% of BPD’s use of force applications were against Black people, and 23% was against Latine people.
From July 2019 to June 2021, BPD shocked people with Tasers (either by firing probes into their bodies or pressing the Taser directly against them), approximately 1.2 times per month. In 2024, that increased to 1.5 times per month.
Police continue to brandish firearms at the people of Boulder as a matter of routine. In 2024 they did so 240 times, or 20 times per month, about double the monthly rate they were pointing their guns at people to gain compliance in 2019-2021.
From 2021-2025, the overall population of Boulder has declined by more than 2%, and according to Colorado Bureau of Investigation data there was a 20% decrease in the violent crimes and a 33% decrease in the property crimes over the same time period. However in just the past year, arrests were up a shocking 28%. Increasing arrests by this magnitude while crime is going down is indicative of over-policing and of policing that targets crimes of poverty.
In 2018, according to detailed data examined by researchers at Hillard Heintze, Black people were twice as likely as white people to be stopped at an officer’s discretion, and once stopped, they were twice as likely to be arrested. At that time, Latine people were less likely to be stopped at an officer’s discretion, according to the report, but when stopped, they were 1.5 times more likely to be arrested than white people. Although Boulder has still not released a dataset comparable to the 2018 data, what was released for 2024 shows that while Black people are 1% of Boulder’s population, they make up 5.7% of people stopped and questioned by the police. Similarly, while Latine people make up 11% of Boulder’s population, they account for 16% of the people stopped and questioned by the police.
What Does it Mean?
“Taken as a whole, these new data show Boulder’s police department is continuing to move in the wrong direction despite the most recent reforms implemented by Boulder City Council,” said Dan Williams, Boulder Progressives Executive Committee member. “Yet again, we’re seeing that the rhetoric of reform coming from BPD doesn’t match the reality – particularly for Black and Brown members of our community,” Williams explained.
“We are deeply concerned by the profound increase in arrests,” said Lisa Sweeney-Miran, Boulder Progressive Executive Committee member and former member of Boulder’s Police Oversight Panel, “at a time when the population and crime rates in Boulder are declining year after year, arrests last year went up by an astounding 28%. Arrests are themselves a use of force, and are often not the most appropriate solution. When we see serious crime declining, and arrests increasing, we know that the bulk of these arrests are occurring in situations involving mental health crises and crimes of poverty. We continue to ask the city to focus more resources on solutions that help people in need, rather than on resources that punish people in crisis.”
Boulder Progressives calls on the City’s leadership to stop issuing statements whitewashing what its own data show, and instead to conduct an independent assessment to explain why policing reform in Boulder continues to move in the wrong direction.
