Metro police records of officer Joshua Lippert's stop and search practices during 2016 show he stopped black drivers at disproportionate rates and searched more drivers than all of his fellow patrol officers, a Nashville-based advocacy group says.
Gideon's Army, a nonprofit that seeks to guide children away from the prison pipeline, used the same MNPD traffic stop database analyzed in their "Driving While Black" report released four months ago.
The new report seeks to make public Lippert's work history, saying stopping black motorists at higher rates is part of a larger departmental problem. Gideon's Army argues that a culture of biased policing contributed to Jocques Clemmons' decision to run away from Lippert, and ultimately, to Clemmons' death.
Lippert fatally shot Clemmons, a 31-year-old Nashville resident, in a James A. Cayce Homes parking lot after a traffic stop and pursuit last week, according to police. Clemmons ran a stop sign and pulled into the parking lot, according to police, which released surveillance video showing Clemmons running the stop sign. Lippert pulled in behind him. When Clemmons got out of his SUV and saw Lippert, he bolted. Police say he was carrying a gun.
Lippert is currently on routine administrative duty pending the outcome of the shooting investigation, which the TBI has taken over. His lawyer, John M. L. Brown, said he is focused solely on what happened Feb. 10.
"Officer Lippert’s vehicle stops in 2016 had nothing to do with the facts and circumstances of that tragic incident, which remains very much under investigation," Metro police spokesman Don Aaron said. "The (report) fails to state that Mr. Clemmons, despite Officer Lippert’s commands, refused to surrender or leave the gun on the ground."
According to the group's report, 90 percent of the stops Lippert made were of black drivers, a rate that is disproportionate to the black population of any of the census tracts he patrolled. The report finds that Lippert’s rate of stopping black drivers was high even in predominantly white neighborhoods and was 20-50 percent higher than other officers who patrolled the same areas.
He conducted searches five times more often than officers patrolling the same census tracts, according to Gideon's Army.
In a response to the report, Metro police argued the advocacy group's analysis of the data is flawed.
"The MNPD does not assign officers by census tracts," said Metro police spokesman Don Aaron in an email. "Officers are assigned to zones of varying size – and often specific areas within a zone – based on a number of factors, certainly including crime issues, calls for service and traffic issues."
Aaron said the MNPD has not yet had a chance to analyze the same data.
U.S. Census tracts take a closer look at neighborhood demographics in Nashville, making the data more reliable than overall census data. Vanderbilt University researcher and statistician Peter Vielehr, who worked with Gideon's Army to produce the report, said using Census tracts allows researchers to better understand racial disparities in context of the neighborhood in which they take place. And it isn't possible to measure population by police zone, he argued.
"Comparing to Census data cannot show in any individual stop whether an officer used race as the sole reason for a traffic stop, which is the policy definition of biased policing," Vielehr said. "However, persistent disparate racial impact across multiple outcomes, including disciplinary infractions and reports from community members, shows that bias is likely."
The officer joined the department five years ago and has received several awards for catching dangerous criminals and helping to save lives. But according to police and his personnel file, Lippert also has a history with excessive use of force.
A year and four months before last week's officer-involved shooting, Lippert pulled over a man named De'Anton Gipson just two blocks away from the incident that led to Clemmons' death.
Gipson said he was driving home from a relative's Cayce Homes residence when the officer stopped him for failing to turn into the correct lane.
"It was pleasant in that moment," Gipson said. "I gave him my information. He went back to the squad car. Everything was OK."
According to police records, Gipson checked out. He didn't have a criminal history and his vehicle was in order. Lippert told him he was in the clear, but he still wanted to search the car.
Gipson declined consent. Lippert asked him to get out of the vehicle. Gipson, who said he didn't understand what was going on, said no. He said he would get out if Lippert called a supervisor to the scene. Several other patrol officers responded to the scene and they argued with Gipson, records show.
"They began opening my doors and tried to extract me from my vehicle," Gipson said.
He fought to stay in his car, which records show had nothing to hide. Gipson knew the officers had neither probable cause nor consent to search his vehicle.
He said he eventually told them to stop, that he would get out on his own if only they wouldn't slam him on the ground. But, he said, they tackled him anyway.
"His wrists had cuts due to the handcuffs being too tight," a report of Gipson's statement at the time says. "Officers put shackles on his ankles. Officers slammed his face on a trunk of a police car and searched him."
He reported the officers, including officer Wesley McClelland, used profanity and racial slurs.
McClelland fatally shot a man in September last year.
When Lippert's supervisor was asked afterward what was troubling to him about the incident, he said Lippert should have told Gipson he was free to leave and then asked for consent, but he "pulls the guy out of the vehicle after requesting consent because he thinks that we can pull anyone out of a vehicle.
"That's pretty much my biggest concern," Metro police Sgt. Gene McCollum said. "The traffic stop had ended and here we are trying to pull someone out and put him on the ground."
When Gipson heard about Nashville's most recent officer involved shooting, he thought he recognized Lippert but wasn't sure until he read his name.
"I feel like something should be done. Not just in Tennessee, but across the states in general. We are not treated like American citizens," he said. "We have officers in our neighborhood who are supposed to police us and who may hate us. And I feel like that’s not right."
In early January, Gideon's Army presented the report to Metro Council’s Public Safety Committee and the Metropolitan Minority Caucus. Metro police were also there to respond.
There, some criticized Metro police for failing to collaborate with Gideon's Army.
The more than 200-page report released in October analyzed traffic stop data collected voluntarily by the Metro Nashville Police Department, as well as 22 statements from African-Americans about their interactions with officers.
Among several findings, the report concluded black and Latino people are stopped more frequently than whites and at disproportionate rates.
The group has called for the end of the department's Operation Safer Streets program, saying it targets vulnerable communities of color and low-income neighborhoods, and denounced the city's recent $1 million purchase of ballistic armor as a betrayal of a promise not to militarize the police force.
Operation Safer Streets, a program that is also criticized by the Black Lives Matter movement, is described as a weekend anti-gang enforcement program.