
Profiling Atherton - kentbrew
http://kentbrew.github.io/profiling-atherton/
======
avichal
I ended up with renting a mansion in Atherton right off of Fair Oaks for dirt
cheap for about a year. If you look at the tickets, a lot of them are on the
streets around Fair Oaks since that's also a short path to/from Redwood City
and the highway.

I would bet a lot of money that the profiling is done based on the type of car
you drive and intended to keep people from Redwood City out of Atherton.

I drive an older Civic and my girlfriend drives a really beat up old Civic. We
would get followed home down El Camino and Fair Oaks basically every day. To
the point that the police learned that our Civics actually belonged in that
Atherton block and then stopped following us after a few months. I had friends
come over in expensive cars and hang out and not a single one was followed. I
asked them specifically to keep an eye on if they were followed because the
profiling was so blatant with me. The expensive cars were never followed.

For what it's worth, I think that's what a lot people in Atherton pay their
local government for. They don't want people there who don't live in Atherton.
You go to Atherton to get away from people, e.g. lots are massive because you
don't want to see your neighbors, and there aren't sidewalks or street lights
in most of Atherton because they don't want people walking around at night.
Because if you're rich and don't want to see your neighbors, why would you
walk around at night? Funnily, the train station is right there too and the
Caltrain only stops in Atherton on the weekends because they don't want the
poor commuters being able to get in or out of Atherton during the week. So
it's not surprising that the data shows the community police force is doing
exactly what the community pays them to do - keep people who don't live in
Atherton out of the city.

~~~
MysticFear
wowow wait... screw the police and story. How do you find these dirt cheap
mansions for rent?!

~~~
avichal
The guy who owned the mansion was a former entrepreneur who didn't want to
live in the Bay Area but owned this giant house, and several other very
expensive properties. To pay the property taxes on all of these places, he
bought/sold very expensive items, and this stuff would get shipped to his
house. But he didn't want to leave it outside for long and needed someone
trustworthy to bring it in doors. That person was me.

So I would once a week drag a giant box filled with something expensive into
the garage, and some guy would come by later and load it into a truck and
carry it off. The guy who owned the house could then live in Tahoe or Hawaii
or Florida in his other mansions, with the peace of mind of knowing he could
pay his tax bills with 0 effort on his part.

In return, I got to live in a 6 bedroom house with a pool, basketball court, 2
gardens...for the cost of the utilities. In case you're curious, I found this
guy on Craigslist when he was trying to rent the mansion at the bottom of the
real estate bust and he just liked me, so we set up this special arrangement.

------
rdl
It seems pretty natural that if the serious penalties are for being unlicensed
drivers (14602.6 VC, the $1800 thing), and most of the unlicensed people have
Hispanic names/are Hispanic (which I think is generally true, in California),
most of the people who get serious penalties for being unlicensed drivers will
be Hispanic. There's no particular racism there on the part of the Atherton
police in that. You have to have sufficient cause for a stop (other traffic
infraction) to pull someone over in the first place; if the initial infraction
isn't worth citing, no big deal. If the initial infraction is valid, but still
not worth citing, and the driver is unlicensed, then 14602.6 VC applies.
There's no particular way to tell if a driver is unlicensed otherwise, and "I
thought he was unlicensed" wouldn't meet the standard of suspicion needed to
do a stop, as a result. Even if someone were unlicensed and caught, if you
didn't have the cause to stop him for something else, he'd walk on the
unlicensed driver charge.

(There's plenty of other racism in society, and maybe in Atherton, but I don't
think their traffic stop stats necessarily show it.)

Otherwise, it seems like a pretty amazing place to live. A little far from SF,
perhaps, so there's a point in Hillsborough's favor, but if I could afford it,
I'd be in Atherton or Hillsborough for sure. Maybe Woodside as an outside
choice.

~~~
auctiontheory
I think the point of the story is that drivers with dark skin are (it appears)
much more likely to be pulled over in the first place.

 _if the initial infraction isn 't worth citing, no big deal_

Well, no. The whole objection to profiling, whether Hispanic drivers in
Atherton or black kids in NYC, is that the cops have no good reason to be
stopping them in the first place.

This report provides no data on how many red-light running/speeding/drunk
white drivers were not pulled over, or were let go and told to "be more
careful next time."

While I'm sure that being very wealthy is amazing, I've never heard "amazing"
used to describe Atherton.

Source: I live two blocks away.

~~~
bloopletech
I think I just posted the same thing you did. Also:

Strawman: 'Well these people all drive crappy cars with stuff wrong with them'
Teardown: Where's all the traffic violations for poor white people? Poor black
people? Further, what about all the other kinds of traffic violation (drunk
driving etc.)? Are Hispanics the only people who ever do anything wrong on the
road?

~~~
rdl
There are not a lot of poor white or poor black people in RWC/Atherton; it's
mainly rich white/asian people and poor hispanic people, in my experience.
Poor people are relatively more segregated by race in the Bay Area than I'd
expect -- poor white people tend to be in various parts of the East Bay, poor
black people in a few specific neighborhoods of SF and EPA and
Oakland/Richmond, poor asians in some parts of the South Bay (and maybe
Oakland?), poor hispanics in ESJ, parts of the Peninsula, south of Oakland,
etc.

It seems like poor people are actually more segregated than rich people here
-- aside from the general shortage of rich black people in general, the rich
people I see in PA/Piedmont/etc. are a pretty representative mix of
white/asian/hispanic/etc.

~~~
bloopletech
And no poor non-Hispanic people driving through on El Camino, getting from A
to B? I don't know the local geography, but I would assume that a main
thoroughfare would get _some_ non-residents.

~~~
rdl
ECR is not a great road to take for any distance, since it has stoplights
everywhere. It's parallel to two expressways (101 and 280), so it's really
only applicable to maybe a 5 mile radius, otherwise you'd take another road.

As far as I can tell, there are ~no poor people living in Atherton, Palo Alto,
or most of Menlo Park, unless you count startup founders, retirees who live on
low retirement incomes in $5mm present-value homes, and the like. There are
poor people living in RWC (sort of), who are almost exclusively Hispanic (at
least from the neighborhoods I saw; I was looking at houses in North Fair Oaks
and RWC at one point.) Even the poor people in RWC didn't seem that poor, more
like working class or middle class (which is poor by comparison to Atherton.)

There _are_ poor people in EPA and Belle Haven (Menlo Park east of 101). They
would be very unlikely to take ECR through Atherton, though, since 101 is
closer. (they used to be almost exclusively black, now it's partially black
and partially hispanic and partially pacific islander). And even there, real
estate is now becoming absurdly expensive again.

There are weird poor (white, and other) people living in the inaccessible
parts of Portola, but they seemed really old, or rarely left their homes, and
they probably weren't actually poor, just "people who live in the middle of
the woods and are kind of weird."

~~~
fennecfoxen
For long-range through traffic, 101 is better, but routes through Atherton are
ideal ways to access to parts of town with businesses which may be relevant to
minority residents, such as Chavez Supermarket (great taqueria). It's also
possible to transfer from 101 to 280 on routes which take you through
Atherton. I've done it many evenings myself.

------
NoPiece
The author is cherry picking his data. He has a pool of 12,500 tickets, and is
looking at a very narrow type of infraction that affected 182 drivers of
12,500. In that small pool, why do hispanic names show up disproportionately?
Maybe they are more likely than your typical Atherton resident to not have a
license due to immigration status.

~~~
abrons
12500 refers to the section of the vehicle code under which 182 tickets were
issued:
[http://dmv.ca.gov/pubs/vctop/d06/vc12500.htm](http://dmv.ca.gov/pubs/vctop/d06/vc12500.htm)

~~~
NoPiece
You are right! I read, "Why were so many (over a hundred) of the 12500
tickets," incorrectly. Looks like there were actually 1509 records in the
author's JSON object.

Nonetheless, it is an infraction type that will disproportionately target
illegal immigrants since they can't get driver's licenses. If the author
wanted to show racism, he'd need to pick something like speeding and show that
hispanic names show up more than their presence in the area.

------
disposeable_0
Cruise down Middlefield past Marsh and somewhere around 5th you'll understand.
There are two very different groups of people living very close together.

In the daytime, workers motor towards the money to toil in the plutocrats'
homes and gardens. A lot of them are illegal immigrants driving marginal
toyota pickups overloaded with tools and co-workers.

Nighttime brings-out the drunkards and the criminals. The police ward off the
latter and move the former back into RWC.

These folks are just like you coming to Sand Hill to pitch your startup: they
want money & this is where it's at. They're the same in that some will toil &
some will grift. They're different in that the deviant poor are more likely to
turn to violence and theft, while the psychopathic want-to-be-rich become
consultants at Accenture or KPMG.

The rich & the poor look & behave differently. A battered PU stands-out as
much as an Athertonian's Fisker just 2 miles down the street the "wrong" way.

They need to be protected from one another. Atherton is way too nice to be
real, yet it exists, so it has to be buffered. That requires vigilance. Bay
Aryans have delicate sensibilities around inegalitarianism; i.e., you need
good police who will go about the business w/o putting it on display.

Same thing in Palo Alto. It has a stark socio-economic border with East Palo
alto that requires sophisticated social policing. As a Palo Alto resident (or
high-tech gastarbeiter) you feel safe and secure in a shared culture of
prosperity. Yet (underreported) property crime and (unreported) deportations
tell a different story: safety isn't a given, it's provided by vigilant,
sophisticated police & enabled by a populace willingly suspending disbelief.

Catch a glimpse by spending your lunch at the transit center or your evening
smoking in any alley off of University. People-watching at the PA Caltrain
socio-economic nexus radically changed my "feel" of PA.

It's hard to overstate the difference between (poor parts of) RWC & Atherton,
EPA & PA, or Belle Haven/Ravenswood & Menlo Park. If you're local, it's well
worth driving (or better biking) from one to another to get the sense:
incredibly, unbelievably nice on the one hand; fucking shit awful on the
other. My gut says: there's something really wrong with this. But my head
can't figure-out what to do about it.

------
wozniacki
Insightful.

However, since we live in such hyper-partisan times where news outlets toe the
political line and play to the cheap seats, this story will never be picked up
by the national media.

I'd be astounded if (or especially) a Krystal Ball or Tamron Hall or Chris
Matthews gave this even a passing glance or the sundry treatment in one of
their segments.

Why? Because this is Northern California. Scratch that. This is the Bay Area.
The No-Daily-Limit ATM for the DNC.

Facts unchanged, if this were to have happened in a wealthy exurb in Florida
or Texas, then any news producer who stumbled on this would have just struck
prime-time Nielsen gold.

Every two-bit Latino Jesse Jackson and his Rainbow coalition would be all over
the story.

Since this happens to be in a hyper-affluent town, the residents of which
bundle and bestow generously to all sorts of progressive causes, both
political and societal, they make an exception.

I'm certain this sort of thing happens in the toniest parts of Connecticut,
New York, Massachusetts and other liberal bastions in the Northeast as well.

It is precisely for those like the residents of Atherton who presumably demand
tough law enforcement within the city limits, for everyone besides them (and
yes this is largely a presumption since there are no facts to suggest that the
residents have any say in this selective enforcement), the terms limousine
liberal and champagne socialist were coined.

This is why I heavily loathe all forms of partisanship and frown on extreme
positions to both the left and right of the center.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limousine_liberal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limousine_liberal)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Champagne_socialist](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Champagne_socialist)

Edit: Additions

~~~
lobotryas
Is this really insightful or is this another case of "correlation not implying
causation"?

Have you paused to consider the geography of these cities, their respectful
populations, commute profiles or other socio-economic data? Of course not -
you're a busy person just like all of us and we all rely on others to provide
digestible, bite-size chunks of information arranged "just so" to help us come
to the same conclusion as the author.

But I digress. Please look at the above replies and consider that few things
are as black-and-white as people want us to believe.

~~~
wozniacki
All the statistics gleaned from incarceration surveys and law enforcement
records cannot indubitably frame a police department for clear racism.

and

Conversely, all the statistics gleaned from incarceration surveys and law
enforcement records cannot indubitably absolve a police department of clear
racism.

It's just the nature of the beast.

Even if you were to be able to prove it, there will always be concern-trolls
who argue,quite convincingly, that preventing police departments from
aggressively enforcing the law (even with provisions such as Stop and Frisk in
NYC) is in itself an injustice to the poor and vulnerable (many of whom might
in fact be of the inflicted race, themselves).

Eg:

Barney Frank argues in favor of more policing of black neighborhoods as not
doing so would be a disservice to the law abiding (black) residents who are
also themselves victims of crime albeit from gang members who might be
black,themselves. So STOP and FRISK is in essence justified, one could imply
from Frank's rationale. This from an openly gay and progressive Democrat.

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tW3xFGeGIWk&t=2m12s](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tW3xFGeGIWk&t=2m12s)

General perception has always been the scale used to judge whether a party is
at the receiving end of overt or covert racism.

Statistics have always been a sideshow. A sweetener, if you will, to seal the
argument but not the primary means of smelling that something's awry in the
way people are treated.

Whether it is community policing or non-discriminatory housing.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/12/business/economy/discrimin...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/12/business/economy/discrimination-
in-housing-against-nonwhites-persists-quietly-us-study-finds.html)

Justice Potter Stewart's thumb rule for ascertaining whether something fits
the definition of hardcore pornography applies here: "I know it when I see
it."

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_know_it_when_I_see_it](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_know_it_when_I_see_it)

Whether Atherton is the most fitting poster child for the kind of limousine
liberalism that I described, is another matter altogether.

I wouldn't be one bit surprised if this happened in any of the most educated
and virulently liberal nooks of the country.

The fact is it does exist and yes it is a thing.

It has been called the "Oh, don't give me any of that racist crap! My Husband
and I gave money to Colin Powell!" strain of racism.

To remove the last remnants of niggling doubt from those who genuinely suspect
that such a pattern of behavior actually exists among the most gifted,
accomplished and refined, while wealthy, members of our society, I give you
this memorable exchange from the movie Cruel Intentions:

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bb2XlqE9OUg](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bb2XlqE9OUg)

This has always been there and given the current mores of our society, is
likely to persist unless we shed our partisan coats and overhaul our
approaches to solving societal problems in a wholesale way.

------
prostoalex
Is it really that mysterious? Middlefield Rd in Atherton feeds into
Middlefield Rd in Redwood City, which is a heavily Hispanic neighborhood, with
some bodegas carrying no signage in English.

Next up - Cupertino police profiling Asian drivers.

~~~
hkmurakami
except Cupertino itself is now predominantly Asian so they wouldn't be
profiling drivers who are more likely than not actual residents :p

~~~
helmut_hed
presumably that was prostoalex's point

------
tricolon
> I have in no way, shape or form "hacked" Atherton or its police department
> to produce this site.

I think it's sad that the author felt compelled to include that.

------
zinssmeister
I used to go jogging in Atherton a few times a week and I always wondered
about all the cars getting pulled over. I wanna say in all cases it was a
Hispanic driver in an older/beat-up car. Never once in the years I lived here
have I seen an "expensive" car getting pulled over.

------
qmz
I've lived in Atherton since 1988 and decided to create a Hacker News account
just so I could comment on this issue.

First, I applaud Kent Brewster's compilation of the data and I believe his
suggestion of racial profiling was done with good intentions. Racial profiling
is a terrible thing and it should be pointed out if it exists.

Having said that, racial profiling is not the reason that 175 of 182 people
cited for driving without a license (DWOL) were Hispanic. I do agree that
being cited for misdemeanors instead of citations is wrong. That's something
that either needs to be stopped or perhaps has an explanation.

Anyone living in the Peninsula or South Bay knows that a lot of gardening,
moving, and repair work is done by Hispanic people. These are the people being
pulled over by the cops. They aren't local residents being pulled over.

It shouldn't be surprising that many of these workers are illegal immigrants.
With the exception of some loopholes, it's not possible for illegal immigrants
to have a driver's license. One California State Assemblyman estimates there
are one million illegal immigrants DWOL in California (see
[http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/california-
politics/2013/01/...](http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/california-
politics/2013/01/california-lawmaker-pushes-drivers-licenses-for-more-illegal-
immigrants.html))

Since the Trayvon Martin ruling happened recently, I can understand that
people's awareness of racial profiling is much greater. But in this case, it's
really about illegal immigration and that these workers aren't allowed to have
driver's licenses. Remember, they aren't being cited for drunk driving,
speeding, or illegal U-turns. They're being cited for not having a license,
which they don't have.

By the way, I've been pulled over in Atherton (my home town) three times for
speeding. And I'm not Hispanic.

------
burgreblast
FWIW, I've been pulled over in Atherton. Something about an "illegal" left
turn.

In an expensive car. At the time, I owned a property there too, and my license
had that address. Got a ticket. Went to court. Judge agreed that it wasn't
illegal turn.

Just sayin.

------
ngoel36
My [non-Hispanic] girlfriend lives in Atherton. Hispanics run that city. At
first I thought it was great for my taco habit, but after our second or third
burrito date I quickly realized the locals were not as thrilled to have us. We
were glared at often, and my rusty Spanish was good enough to pick up murmurs
of "puta madre" and other various obscenities as we walked by. Needless to
say, she's moving up to the City soon, which means less $1 tacos for me...

On a happier note, she drives a brand new luxury SUV. I don't think I've even
seen a cop drive near us.

~~~
muzz
Where do you buy tacos in Atherton? And $1 tacos at that?

~~~
ojbyrne
Really Redwood City:
[http://www.emeraldlake.com/tacos/](http://www.emeraldlake.com/tacos/)

EDIT (and environs):

"Although there are excellent tacos to be had all over Redwood City, any
first-time pilgrim should focus on "Little Michoacan," the unofficial
appellation for all the neighborhoods bounded by Highway 101, El Camino Real,
Woodside Road and Willow Road. (It includes the North Fair Oaks neighborhood
that lies just outside Redwood City proper.) The area is home to thousands of
families with ties to the Mexican state of Michoacan. Thus, the roster of
taquerias and other businesses along Middlefield Road reads like a roadmap of
the Mexican state's municipalities -- Morelia, Uruapan, Arteaga, Apatzingan."

------
haveaheart
We also live on the border of Atherton and when we drive the BMW no one
bothers us. We also have an older commuter car, and when we pull out into
Atherton a police cruiser will follow us along El Camino. The police wait at
spots that are exit and entrance points to Fair oaks, such as Fifth and El
Camino or Middlefield rd going into Fair Oaks, and by Selby Lane School. These
aren't just peoples maids or gardeners, but simply people driving older beat
up cars, which evidently is probable cause to stop by the Atherton PD

------
gnachman
I got pulled over in Atherton. I was driving a filthy 15 year old Toyota I'd
bought for $800. The cop said he'd only pulled me over because "dirty cars are
often stolen." I didn't get a ticket since I hadn't done anything wrong, but I
really don't think he had reasonable suspicion for that stop. I'm not
Hispanic, but he was basically profiling me for driving a poor person's car.

~~~
Vixter
I guess I had better wash my 12 y/o car before I drive through Atherton again.
I only have to go through there about once a month though.

------
kitmiller55
If you are an undocumented immigrant, you might not have a valid driver's
license, and you might have to leave your car at the site or have it
impounded. Some towns in the Peninsula don't allow traffic cops to ask for
immigration papers or mix up their jobs with Federal immigration laws, - I
don't know about Atherton. But if you're stopped and you don't have a license,
the police can ask you to leave your car by the road, and you walk home. I
teach ESL, and many of my students have had to walk away from their cars. If
the police do impound the car, the owners often don't have money or are afraid
to go get them, so they lose their car. This happens all the time, and often
causes big logistical and financial problems for the families.

------
Wentworth
I think you have incomplete data and your conclusions are, therefore, suspect.

To illustrate my point, you have no data points for infraction offenses
(speeding, equipment violations, etc). Your data is only for misdemeanor
licensing violations.

Given that one can't obtain a California license without a valid social
security number, doesn't it make sense that the large Hispanic undocumented
population would be well represented for these violations?

------
gkoberger
Only semi-related, however a parody account of Atherton made for Mountain View
recently got a lot of press when some news outlets thought it was real:
[http://mv-voice.com/news/show_story.php?id=7229](http://mv-
voice.com/news/show_story.php?id=7229)

------
salilmehta
Virtually non-existent chance the 175 tickets to Hispanic-named drivers
happened by chance alone:
[http://statisticalideas.blogspot.com/2013/08/profiling-
ather...](http://statisticalideas.blogspot.com/2013/08/profiling-
atherton.html).

------
kentbrew
I've taken a few minutes to update Profiling Atherton with the most recent
month's worth of data from Menlo Park, the city just south of Atherton. Lots
of confiscated cars, but the ethnic mix is much closer to what you'd expect in
Silicon Valley.

------
Zaheer
What's interesting if you look at a map of Atherton on Google Maps is that
exactly will the city lines are drawn, it is much more green (trees,
vegetation, etc). I remember reading something about how the greener the area,
the wealthier it tends to be.

------
joeyo
Speculation: by booking them for misdemeanors rather than infractions they can
run them through an immigration database.

------
skannamalai
goes to show you never know what you'll find when you start digging.
Incredible work, OP.

------
beatpanda
Nice work.

