Earlier this month, Sacramento city officials received results from a study they commissioned on whether Sacramento police officers were racially profiling residents when making traffic stops and arrests. After more than two years of study and $230,000 in taxpayer dollars, they have released their conclusion: Yes.

When presented with the findings, Sacramento Mayor Heather Fargo issued a public apology to those the report said were affected by racially charged policing.

The story, however, doesn’t end there. The report presents a special challenge facing the officers charged with protecting the city described in 2002 by Time magazine as the most diverse and “ethnically integrated” municipality in the U.S.

Fallout from the report has resonated especially loud in City Hall, as Fargo faces a re-election challenge from former NBA All-Star Kevin Johnson. Johnson, an advocate for the Sacramento Police Department and winner of their union’s endorsement for mayor, said the report is a chance to build new inroads between minorities and law enforcement.

“Sacramento’s diversity is its strength. The statistics put a spotlight on the need for both the police department and city leaders to build greater trust between officers and Sacramento’s Latino and African-American communities,” Johnson said. “There needs to be more education and community outreach, and we need to continue efforts to increase the diversity of our police force.”

The study, released publicly Aug. 12 and conducted by Dr. John Lamberth and his firm, Lamberth Consulting, concluded that law enforcement officers with the Sacramento Police Department used racial prejudices as a possible motivator when stopping, detaining or arresting drivers of ethnic backgrounds. Ultimately, the report found that black and Hispanic drivers were stopped more frequently, asked to exit their vehicle more often and more likely to be “patted down” than their white and Asian counterparts.

“It has been suggested by other police departments [and] authors that black and Hispanic motorists are stopped more often because they egregiously violate speed laws more often than other motorists and that they are searched more often because they are more likely than other motorists to be carrying contraband,” the report detailed. “Obviously both of these alleged reasons can be discounted in Sacramento. Lamberth Consulting wishes to make clear that at no time did any official of [the Sacramento Police Department] indicate that they thought black and Hispanic motorists were more egregious speeders or that they were more likely to be carrying contraband.”

This is the latest study commissioned by the city on the matter of racial profiling, the first of three earlier reports being issued in 2001. Since July 1, 2000, the Sacramento Police Department, upon the request of the Sacramento City Council, has been collecting data on the ethnicity of those commuters stopped by officers as part of a new program initiated by then-Gov. Gray Davis in an attempt to discover if collecting such data would prove beneficial in determining whether California cops were racial profiling.

To facilitate in the deciphering and dissemination of this data collected, the city in 2004 created the Sacramento Community Racial Profiling Commission.

The earlier studies conducted using the police data proved either too inconclusive or not actionable according to city officials (an assertion agreed with by Lamberth in his firm’s report), thus the commission sought an additional study. In 2006, they selected Lamberth’s firm to conduct the report.

Calling Lamberth an “internationally recognized expert in the field of racial profiling” in a February 2008 memo, Crystal Taylor, chair of the Sacramento Community Racial Profiling Commission, said the desire to host the report was out of a “commitment to unbiased policing.”

Lamberth is well known throughout the nation for his firm’s in-depth reports on racial profiling by various law enforcement officials, having conducted studies in New Jersey, Maryland, Arizona, Kansas, California and Michigan.

Some found the report’s data flawed and skewed, not taking into account officer training.

“It doesn’t take into consideration that it was my training and experience that caused me to take a second look at that vehicle. The study doesn’t reflect that,” said Sacramento Police Officers Association Vice President Mark Tyndale to News10.

Among the many recommendations made to the Sacramento Police Department by the report in order for officers to avoid racially profiling, Lamberth Consulting advised the need for more racial sensitivity training.

Additional solutions and recommendations are set to be culled from public meetings held earlier this month and from city officials examining the report.

To read the Lamberth Consulting report, visit www.cityofsacramento.org/crpc.