DC stop representation by police district
In DC's 2nd District, a wealthy, majority-white area where 8% of residents are Black, Black people were 53% of everyone MPD stopped between 2023 and 2025, nearly 7 times their share of the neighborhood. In the majority-Black districts east of the river (6 and 7), stops of Black people were roughly in line with who lives there. Across DC, the disparity is worst where the fewest Black people live.
Each district shaded by its local representation index: magnitude against its own population, not a ranking against other districts. Darkest is the 2nd District; east of the river is pale. Click a district for its full page.
Districts are listed in numeric order. This is not a ranking: each district is compared to its own local baseline and to the citywide figure, never placed on a most-to-least list.
Local index is the headline. Citywide is shown only to demonstrate that the naive comparison points at the wrong districts.
| District | Local Black pop | Black stop share | Local index | Black stops (N) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| District 1 (1D) | 25.0% | 77.9% | 3.11× | 22,811 |
| District 2 (2D) | 8.0% | 53.2% | 6.67× | 13,902 |
| District 3 (3D) | 22.0% | 73.4% | 3.33× | 23,511 |
| District 4 (4D) | 48.6% | 69.7% | 1.43× | 17,140 |
| District 5 (5D) | 56.7% | 82.5% | 1.46× | 31,780 |
| District 6 (6D) | 88.4% | 92.5% | 1.05× | 28,099 |
| District 7 (7D) | 86.5% | 95.5% | 1.10× | 28,402 |
Local index = Black stop share ÷ that district's own Black population share.
Show citywide comparison
The citywide index compares each district's stop share to DC's overall 43.3% Black population. It runs high for majority-Black districts simply because those areas are majority-Black, which is why the local index (comparing to each district's own population) is the honest measure of disparity.
| District | Citywide index |
|---|---|
| District 1 (1D) | 1.80× |
| District 2 (2D) | 1.23× |
| District 3 (3D) | 1.70× |
| District 4 (4D) | 1.61× |
| District 5 (5D) | 1.91× |
| District 6 (6D) | 2.14× |
| District 7 (7D) | 2.21× |
Citywide, Black people were 1.82× over-represented in stops overall (167,647 of 213,336 known-race stops), but that average hides where the disparity actually concentrates, which is what the districts above show.
Deeper analyses: The disparity over time (2019–2025) | Searches: the outcome test | All analyses
How this is calculated and its limitations
How this number is built (and where it's soft)
- Local baseline. The headline index compares each district's Black stop share to that district's own Black population share, not the citywide 43.3%. It answers "relative to who lives here." The citywide figure is shown alongside for comparison; the two deliberately have opposite shapes.
- Grain: stops of persons. MPD stop rows are per person, not per stop-event (multi-person stops repeat). Counts are person-records, paired against ACS person population.
- Exclusions (reported, not dropped quietly). Stops with race recorded as Unknown (15,728, 6.87% of all stops) are excluded from the known-race denominator. Stops with no mappable district (3,057, 1.33%) are excluded from any per-district figure. The figures on this page rest on 91.95% of all stops.
- Whole-tract population caveat. District populations are built by assigning each census tract's whole population to one district by its centroid, so population near a district boundary can be misattributed and the reconciliation check cannot detect it.
- Vintage mismatch. Population is ACS 2019-2023 (5-year); the stops are 2023-2025. The denominator lags the numerator.
- District-grained. MPD stop data has no coordinates and no ward, only a police district. All geography here is at the seven-district level.