The Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office is for the first time collecting data on verbal warnings made during traffic stops.
The change comes after years of urging by faith-based social justice coalition PEACE and is advised by a nationally recognized expert on bias in policing.
Boston-based Northeastern University professor Jack McDevitt told the more than 1,200 people gathered last month at the annual PEACE meeting in Jupiter that the verbal warning information provided by Sheriff Ric Bradshaw is a solid data set to start.
But he needs more information to determine whether traffic stops are distributed equally among ethnic and racial groups.
PEACE first made the issue a point of focus in 2019.
Excessive traffic stops can escalate into police brutality and unnecessary arrests, Annie Ruth Nelson of Tabernacle Missionary Baptist Church in West Palm Beach said at last year’s PEACE meeting. “Data analysis and public transparency can show our community that law enforcement agencies can be trusted,” she said.
The sheriff’s office already was collecting data on written warnings and traffic citations but not verbal warnings. Bradshaw pledged in 2024 to collect the data on verbal warnings.
Between May 2024 and November 2025, the sheriff’s office collected data on 32,000 such traffic stops, McDevitt said at the March 24 PEACE meeting at JupiterFirst Church. “That’s a lot of traffic stops. That’s a lot of deputies filling out the right forms and sending them in.”
Initial data showed that of the 140,824 traffic stops conducted by deputies, 23% resulted in a verbal warning, McDevitt said in a report for PEACE.
Sheriff’s deputies patrol unincorporated portions of the county and several cities, including Lake Worth Beach, Wellington, Royal Palm Beach and the Glades.
Persuading the sheriff to collect and share verbal warning demographic data is a breakthrough for the PEACE. It creates records of tens of thousands of traffic stops that in the past were not documented, PEACE lead organizer Paige Shortsleeves said in an interview.
“He has followed through on this,” she said. “We are told that most departments aren’t doing this level of data analysis unless they are mandated by federal authorities.”
A closer look at the data
McDevitt divided the verbal warnings among categories of traffic offenses: equipment, registration, moving violation and speeding. (Very few pedestrians received verbal warnings.)
About a quarter of each group got a verbal warning, McDevitt said.
“This is an important first step, but it is only the beginning to determine whether racial profiling is taking place,” McDevitt said in an interview. “The only conclusion I had is that they were doing a good job of collecting the verbal warnings.”
The sheriff, who attended the PEACE meeting, agreed to provide data on written warnings and traffic tickets by the end of April to allow a deeper analysis and bias check.
“The first part has verified that, I think, we’re doing a pretty good job,” Bradshaw told the crowd. “So we’re very happy to see what the next part will show.”
With the added data, McDevitt can review all police stops for speeding, for example, to see who received a citation, who got a written warning and who got a verbal warning. “If everybody can suffer for speeding, we shouldn’t see big variations by race or ethnicity,” he said.
“When we can compare the data, we will know if a white person was given a warning for the same thing that a Black person was arrested for,” Shortsleeves said. “If there is no bias, then great.”
The professor also wants to analyze police searches.
“As we look around the country, the one place where we see disproportionate activity by law enforcement is searches,” McDevitt said. “Officers, deputies are more likely to search people they see as criminals, which, unfortunately, is people of color. So we can look at that here in Palm Beach County and say, ‘Are there disproportionate searches being done by the sheriff’s office deputies?’”
Years in the making
PEACE has been studying equitable policing for years
“I think this is a testament to this group that in 2019, PEACE reached out to me to say, ‘What are the best practices across the country?’” McDevitt said. “2019 and we’re still here. We’re still working on it.”
In addition to community policing, members are focused on mental health and affordable housing. In October, PEACE members voted to add immigration to their priorities. They are studying ways to push back and help people living in fear during the heightened enforcement of immigration laws.
Along with all other sheriff’s offices across the state, Bradshaw’s agency signed up for the federal 287(g) program, which gives local police the authority to enforce immigration law through ICE. The agreements were required by Florida law, though the amount of participation wasn’t.
At the annual meeting, PEACE representatives said they are focused on the fear immigrants face of being arrested and separated from their families, but they have not yet identified a solution. They asked the sheriff to commit to meeting with a small group this month to learn more.
Bradshaw, a Democrat who was reelected in 2024, agreed to meet. And although he was not asked, he addressed the issue.
“I want everyone in this room to know that I have not and I will not participate in immigration sweeps with ICE,” he said.
The organization, People Engaged in Active Community Efforts, was founded in 1991 and has grown to 27 member organizations. Until recently, it has been made up of only Christian groups in its membership including seven Catholic, three Missionary Baptist and three African Methodist Episcopal churches.
Rabbi Yaron Kapitulnik, senior rabbi of Temple Judea in Palm Beach Gardens, led a prayer at the meeting. The temple is the first Jewish congregation to join PEACE.
“In Yiddish, we say it’s a shanda that we have not been here with you before, but we are here now to say we are together because we are better when we are together.”
This story was originally published by Stet News Palm Beach, a WLRN News partner.
