By Eric Stock

BLOOMINGTON – Bloomington Police Chief Brendan Heffner said a recent report on pedestrian traffic which shows a higher percentage of blacks being searched than whites is misleading.

Heffner told WJBC’s Susan Saunders these pedestrian stops are not random but are not based on race..

PODCAST: Listen to Susan Saunders’ interview with Heffner on WJBC.

“Ninety-nine percent of these pedestrian stops that they are questioning occur in high-crime areas,” Heffner said. “Pedestrian stops and frisks, when warranted and legal, they help us get get and guns off the streets.”

The study of the first six months of 2016 showed while blacks make up 11 percent of the city’s population, they made up 36 percent of the pedestrian stops. A larger percentage of whites, however, who were stopped were actually arrested.

“I want to make it perfectly clear, it’s based on a person’s actions or information we have, it is not based on race,” Heffner said.

Heffner added he was not surprised by the results.

“I would have been surprised if there were a lot of stops and searches outside our high-crime areas because then I would have had some issues with that. But in our high crimes area, particularly the one in the middle, we have hybrid gang activity in that area.”

Julie Prandi of Bloomington compiled the report through information obtained by Freedom of Information Act requests and the data was vetted by the American Civil Liberties Union.

Eric Stock can be reached at [email protected].