Lee's Summit Police Dept
Demographic data used for the City of Lee's Summit is questionable in accuracy. In Applied Geography (2014), Spielman, Folch, and Nagle state in the abstract: “The margins of error on ACS census tract-level data are on average 75 percent larger than those of the corresponding 2000 long-form estimate. The practical implications of this increase is that data are sometimes so imprecise that they are difficult to use.” As a local example, the data underrepresents the diversity of the population, reporting 7.85% African American residents while the school district reports 13.3% of students are African American, a 5% difference. Lee's Summit is also a retail and employment des- tination, attracting residents from adjacent urban centers with higher minority population percentages (25 – 40%) not reflected in the population data. The driving population statistics reflect traffic on major arterial roadways, such as I-470, M-291, US-50, and M-150. This through traffic is illustrated by the fact that over half of all individuals stopped are non-residents. The highest statistically significant search rate indicates African Americans are searched at a factor of 6.76, but this is based upon 139 searches; of these 108 were mandated incident to or inventory due to arrest or contraband in plain view.