Norwich — City police may have been flagged last year for disproportionately stopping Hispanic motorists during daylight hours because of where they focus their enforcement, the latest Connecticut Racial Profiling Prohibition Project report said.

The project, created to ensure police comply with the state’s anti-racial profiling law, analyzed about 560,000 stops from 106 law enforcement agencies last year. Norwich was among eight agencies that had statistically significant disparities in their stop patterns, which researchers said doesn’t necessarily constitute racial profiling.

From Oct. 1, 2015, to Sept. 30, 2016, the study found, Hispanics were 1.6 times more likely to be stopped in Norwich during the day than at night, even after controlling for violations more likely to be noticed at night.

Researchers said that was cause for concern under the “veil of darkness” test, which assumes officers can more easily determine a person’s race when it’s light outside.

But Ken Barone, a project staffer, has said his team analyzed each department 41 ways before drawing any conclusions — a complex procedure meant to remove doubt that nonetheless has drawn skepticism from some police leaders.

The project’s latest report, released last week, looked at officer behavior and location data from the eight identified agencies — Ansonia, Berlin, Darien, Madison, Monroe, Newtown, Norwich and Ridgefield — to see what might have driven the disparities.

Police in Norwich, as in most of the other towns, were more likely to cite minorities for equipment violations including darkly tinted windows, nonfunctioning lights and hidden or nonexistent plates.

They also were more likely to give black and Hispanic drivers misdemeanor summonses and search them.

Chief Patrick Daley previously said diverse traffic from the two nearby casinos could be driving the disparities, but the report said the influence of out-of-town drivers “appears to be less of a factor in Norwich than it might be in other communities.”

About half of the drivers stopped weren’t residents of Norwich, though 62 percent of black drivers were.

GPS location data was available for just 23 percent of Norwich’s 6,183 stops, so researchers analyzed the stops by corridor instead of census tract, the preferred method. Researchers said 38 percent of the stops happened on state routes 82 and 2. They also found “high enforcement levels” in the central sections of the city, where 58 percent of Norwich’s driving-age Hispanics and black residents live, and where there generally are more calls for service, crime and crashes.

Researchers said Norwich police should, among other things, pay attention to how equipment-related stops in higher minority areas may add to the disparity.

'It's hard to hate up close'

In a written response included in the report, Daley said his department has looked at making it easier to include GPS-level data — an expensive undertaking — and continues to check traffic stop reports for completeness weekly.

Speaking by phone Friday, Daley said he was happy the report found officers' enforcement aligned with areas that see more crime and crashes.

He said he didn't plan to ask officers to change their enforcement of equipment violations because "those rules are there for safety, and the safety of the public is our main priority."

Tamara Lanier, a Norwich resident who sits on the Racial Profiling Project Advisory Board as a representative of the Connecticut National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said she has heard concerns about possible police racial profiling from community and family members for years.

Lanier raised the issue with police in September 2015, when her vehicle was pulled over twice in two days for reasons she contested.

In an email to then-Deputy Chief Daley, Lanier said it was “unusual at best” for her vehicle to be detained so frequently. She also said officers in both cases failed to issue a notice, required by law, explaining what a person can do if she believes she was pulled over unjustly.

“I find the lack of issuance of the traffic stop notice unacceptable,” Daley wrote back the same day. “I will be addressing the issue department wide.”

Speaking by phone this week, Lanier said she believes police should check traffic stop tickets for completion more than once a week and should include GPS location data as other departments do. She also said Norwich should create a police-community relations board to build relationships in the city’s majority-minority neighborhoods.

“We have to look at the financial impact of profiling on motorists when they’re continuing to get these tickets disproportionately,” she said, citing fines and increased insurance costs. “I hope some of this information (from the study) starts those conversations.”

Daley, however, said he would rather see better-attended public forums than a board or a commission, because commissions can "take on personalities."

"Some people don't have a voice, and those are the people you want to get to," he said. "That's why we want to do forums and try to get proactive. It's hard to hate up close. The more we get into the community, the better off we are — that's our philosophy."

l.boyle@theday.com