Virginia law enforcement officers conducted more than 1.24 million stops last year, a 7% increase from 2024, according to new data from the Virginia State Police.
The records also show a familiar pattern: the likelihood of being stopped or searched still varies by race, despite reforms meant to curb those disparities.
The police stops are documented under Virginia’s Community Policing Act, a cornerstone of policing reforms enacted in 2021. The sweeping package of law enforcement reforms came in the wake of George Floyd’s murder by Minneapolis police officers. Virginia law now requires police and sheriff departments statewide to report every traffic and investigatory stop to the state police.
The reforms were designed to reduce bias-based profiling and strengthen public accountability. Law enforcement agencies are required to collect and report details such as the race and ethnicity of the person stopped, as well as their age and gender.
The resulting records offer the public a rare and comprehensive window into how local police departments across the Commonwealth use their stop authority. The data also captures a wide range of reasons for a stop, including traffic and equipment violations, calls for service, traffic accidents, warrant service, and criminal investigations.
The report also includes Terry stops, also known as stop-and-frisk encounters.
Last year, Black drivers and residents faced higher stops per capita compared to their white counterparts across the Commonwealth, according to an analysis by the Virginia Center for Investigative Journalism at WHRO.
Some of the disparity may be fueled by implicit bias, said Jack Preis, a professor of Law at the University of Richmond. But, he said, it is difficult to conclude the extent to which bias plays a role without examining specific cases.
“Police officers have an enormous amount of discretion in whether or not to enforce the law against anyone,” Preis said. “When an officer sees 20 different people committing the same crime, they are free to arrest one of the 20, and that's potentially where bias can creep in.”
Ideally, officers would be given a variety of assignments, exposing them to different types of people and crime, he said. New experiences can give officers a fresh perspective and prevent some bias.
Last year, the disparity in police stops against individuals of different races was found most clearly in rural communities like Carroll County in Southwest Virginia, where law enforcement conducted 1,967 stops of Black persons and 9,821 of white persons, according to VCIJ’s analysis of the 2025 police stops data.
The county has a population of 29,000, and nearly 95% of residents are white. Less than 1% of county residents – about 140 people – identify as Black or African American.
A majority of police stops in Carroll County occurred on or around I-77, one of Virginia’s major transportation corridors. The interstate runs directly through Hillsville, the county seat, making it a focal point for enforcement activity. Records indicate that officers from the Hillsville Police Department conducted most of those stops.
Neither the town’s police chief nor the Carroll County Sheriff’s Office responded to requests for comment.
In some jurisdictions, white drivers are more likely to be stopped. In Emporia, for example, officers stopped white individuals at a higher rate than Black individuals. Officers in the county recorded about 3,089 stops of white individuals compared with 4,045. The city has three times as many Black residents as white residents, according to census data.
In Northampton County, the rate of stops for white individuals is also higher than for Black individuals. The Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel connects Northampton to Hampton Roads.
Experts say patterns like those seen in Carroll County help explain why Virginia lawmakers enacted policing reforms in 2020. But many caution it’s difficult to draw broad conclusions from the data.
“The analysis of racial disparity is a complex field with a vast array of potential contributing factors,” according to a 2024 report from the Virginia Department of Criminal Justice Services. “Many data elements play influential roles in racial/ethnic patterns of traffic enforcement but are unavailable to DCJS.”
Traffic enforcement can be influenced by the race or gender of the officer performing the stop, agency policies and community priorities driving enforcement priorities, according to DCJS. The data does not include police report narratives outlining legal justifications for a stop.
While the 2020 police reforms were prompted by police actions in other states, Virginia has its own history of controversial police stops.
In December 2020, Windsor, Va. police officers Joe Gutierrez and Daniel Crocker pulled over Army Lt. Caron Nazario.
Police body camera video showed the officers pulling out their guns, striking and pepper-spraying Nazario, who was in uniform. Gutierrez was fired over his actions during the stop.
A jury awarded Nazario less than $4,000 against Gutierrez and Crocker in a $1.5 million suit he filed in a federal court in Richmond. He has since sued Gutierrez a second time.
Results of Virginia’s traffic stops
Police officers did not take any enforcement actions in only about 4% of stops, releasing drivers, passengers, and residents without issuing a citation or making an arrest. In almost all cases, however, officers either arrested the individual, issued a citation, or gave a warning. Police released individuals with a warning in about one out of three stops.
VCIJ’s analysis reveals a consistent pattern in how those outcomes vary by race.
The data shows that officers arrest individuals who identify as Black or African American at a higher rate during stops than individuals who identify as white. When officers issue citations or summonses, however, they do so at roughly similar proportions for both Black and white individuals.
High number of stops in Northern and Southeast Virginia
Police activity is most concentrated in the state’s most populous and traffic-challenged region - Northern Virginia.
In raw numbers, Fairfax County recorded the highest number of stops last year, with more than 117,000 encounters, a reflection of its large population and proximity to Washington, D.C.
But when measured relative to population size, a different picture emerges. Northampton County, home to about 12,000 people, logged nearly 23,000 stops, giving it the highest stop‑to‑population ratio in the state.
The reforms also changed how Virginia law enforcement can police traffic. As part of the Community Policing Act, lawmakers prohibited traffic stops for certain minor infractions. Equipment violations, such as broken or malfunctioning taillights, were downgraded to secondary offenses, meaning officers cannot initiate a stop based solely on those issues.
The reforms also prohibit officers from stopping or arresting a motorist solely because they smell marijuana.
Despite those restrictions, officers conducted 5% more traffic- and equipment-related stops in 2025 than in 2024.
The most frequently cited reasons for those stops were speeding and failure to display a valid inspection sticker or current registration.
Some categories of police stops have increased in recent years, while others have steadily declined.
Terry stops have dropped consistently since 2022, when officers conducted more than 10,000 statewide. Last year, officers carried out about 8,100 stop-and-frisk enforcement stops.
By contrast, traffic- and equipment-related stops rose to their highest level since 2021. Officers also recorded the largest number of investigative detentions last year, signaling a shift in the types of encounters driving police traffic enforcement.
Reach Kunle Falayi at kunle.falayi@vcij.org.
How we analyzed the community policing data
The Virginia Center for Investigative Journalism at WHRO analyzed statewide community policing data to measure traffic stop patterns at the county and city levels. We aggregated the number of stops reported for each locality and merged them with the U.S. Census Bureau’s population data to calculate per-capita stop rates.
