Black drivers are disproportionately ticketed and arrested by Ferndale cops along the Eight Mile Road border with Detroit, according to a two-year investigation by the Michigan chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-MI).
The report, titled “Lifting the Veil on Racial Profiling in Ferndale,” found that police in the suburban city engage in “predatory” traffic stops targeting Black motorists.
The study is at least the third examination over the past decade to strongly suggest Ferndale police use racial profiling tactics.
CAIR-MI leaders are calling on the Department of Justice to launch an investigation into “predatory policing” in Ferndale and are urging the police department to hire an independent group to examine protocols and come up with solutions to end the practice.
“Since Ferndale claims to care about diversity, they should take some steps so that African Americans don’t feel excluded from the city of Ferndale or maybe don’t even want to drive into Ferndale,” CAIR-MI Director Dawud Walid said at a news conference Thursday. “I myself avoid driving through Ferndale. I have family who lives in Detroit and don’t even want to drive down Eight Mile Road. This is a real issue.”
Although Black people make up just 6.3% of Ferndale’s population, they represent 86% of the arrests made and 84% of the traffic tickets issued along Eight Mile between Jan. 1, 2021, and Oct. 31, 2021, according to data obtained through the Freedom of Information Act and Ferndale’s transparency dashboard.
The disparities were most severe along Eight Mile, the decades-long dividing line between the affluent, predominately white suburban neighborhoods of Oakland County and the lower-income, primarily Black neighborhoods of Detroit.
Of all traffic stops initiated by Ferndale police in neighboring cities, 75% occurred on Eight Mile in the first 10 months of 2021. The study also found that 11% of the citations issued during that period were on the Detroit side of Eight Mile.
Although the suburb shares a border with six cities, 80% of all traffic stops made by Ferndale police outside of their own city took place in Detroit.
Overall, less than 1% of all traffic stops involved Ferndale residents.
“This indicates to us that there is predatory policing going on by the Ferndale Police Department,” CAIR-MI staff attorney Amy Doukoure said at a news conference Thursday. “What you see is that police are treating the drivers inside the city of Detroit differently. They are treating minority drivers differently.”
CAIR-MI is also urging city of Detroit officials to condemn Ferndale police for pulling over Black residents on the Detroit side of the Eight Mile border.
The CAIR-MI investigation began in October 2021 when the group filed a federal lawsuit against Ferndale and its police department on behalf of Helana Rowe, a Black Muslim woman who was arrested for an expired license plate tag and forced to remove her hijab in front of male officers for a booking photo.
In 2014, the ACLU of Michigan reviewed traffic stops to discover that Ferndale police disproportionately pull over Black motorists.
Another study in the Du Bois Review found that Black motorists were more likely to be arrested and ticketed after traffic stops in neighboring Eastpointe.
CAIR-MI leaders said they don’t know with certainty why Ferndale police disproportionately target Black motorists, but they pointed to a historic pattern of policing in metro Detroit and across the country.
“What we can say is that in southeastern Michigan, in particular between Oakland County and Wayne County, there is a well-documented history of racial tension, hyper-segregation, and we know without a doubt there is a history of systemic racism in America,” Walid said.
In a statement, Ferndale Police Chief Dennis Emmi did not address the specific allegations but said his department is committed to fair and transparent practices.
“As an accredited agency, we take policy enforcement and standards very seriously—which includes annual hours of training for fair and impartial policing and implicit bias,” Emmi said. “We are committed to transparency and progress. If the Department of Justice has concerns, we are happy to cooperate. We are an open book.”
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