Santa Barbara Police commanders reported an increase in stops and detentions last year. Most were initiated by officers, while the rest were responses to public calls for service.
Commanders Nathan Beltran and Charlie Katsapis presented SBPD’s annual report on Racial and Identity Profiling Act (RIPA) data to the city’s Fire and Police Commission last month.
The 2025 data shows 13,253 RIPA stops and detentions. About two-thirds were initiated by an officer.
They said the increase in the number of stops — about 2,000 more than 2024 — was mostly due to more hiring and an increase in warnings and citations issued.
RIPA was established by the state to monitor how law enforcement officers interact with the public. The goal is to eliminate profiling.
Each officer who makes a stop (traffic stop, pedestrian detention, stop and search) has to document the reason and the outcome.
They also have to write down perceived demographic information, including race, gender, disability, sexual orientation and housing status.
The results of stops by perceived race are an important data set to look for potential bias, Katsapis noted at the meeting.
Verbal warnings and citations were the most common outcomes across all racial groups, followed by arrests, according to the data.
Based on U.S. Census demographic data, white people are 52.8% of the city population and accounted for 45% of police stops; Hispanic and Latino people are 36.4% of the population and accounted for 44.6% of stops; and Black and African American people are 1.6% of the population and accounted for 5% of stops.
More than 25% of people stopped or detained by Santa Barbara police officers last year were perceived to be unhoused (3,545 encounters).
Beltran said the demographics of the department’s officers are “strikingly similar” to the city they work in, which he said is a point of pride.
The SBPD’s 119 officers are 48.7% white; 34.5% Hispanic and Latino; 9.2% “other”; 5% Asian; and 2.5% Black and African American, according to the RIPA report.
The department reports that 77% of officers are men and 23% of officers are women, which is 23% of the staff and about double the national average, Beltran noted.
SBPD’s professional, nonsworn staff is mostly women, at 66%.
Fire and Police Commission Chair Aaron Jones asked about training for officer perceptions, since it seems “arbitrary or subjective.”
Katsapis said that is a challenge of RIPA, which is explicit that the documentation has to be based on the initial perception of the officer. It can’t be information shared by the person stopped or from an identification card.
That individual perception “is subjective and variable from person to person,” he said.
Some of the RIPA categories can be developed through training, like recognizing signs of someone having a mental health crisis, Katsapis noted.
Beltran said the department conducts monthly audits of RIPA entries. Supervisors review the documentation and compare it to body camera footage captured by officers. They check that there was no bias-based policing or violations of department policy, he said.