State representatives voted down a bill that would have allowed New Hampshire law enforcement to regularly collect demographic data from people stopped and arrested in the state.

House Bill 597 would have given residents the option to put their race and ethnicity on their licenses and require law enforcement officers to record that data when someone is stopped or detained, even if they are not cited. 

Once the data was collected, police and the public would be able to further analyze trends in who was being stopped, where they were being stopped and if the number of police interactions skewed higher for minority populations.

However, the majority of state representatives felt the bill was not complete and it was defeated 200 to 172 despite the unanimous support for more data collection from the Law Enforcement Accountability, Community and Transparency commission and Gov. Chris Sununu.  

“The bill does not contain all of the data needed to create any meaningful statistics,” said state representative John Sellers, a Bristol Republican. “It allows for the collection of data but does not require all drivers to provide race and ethnicity data, which leaves room for further errors because it is subjective.”

Since the information would be voluntary and issued only when residents renewed their licenses, it would not provide the state with reliable reports of statistical data, he continued, and could cause both the public and police departments to make false conclusions. 

State Rep. Steven Smith, a Charlestown Republican, agreed and added that the percentage of people in New Hampshire that are not Caucasian is very small. 

“Any anomaly in those numbers will be significant and lead to error,” Smith said. “Underreporting of one will make the others higher and we’ll have no idea if the numbers are accurate. It doesn’t validate the data and it doesn’t protect the people you’re collecting the data from.”

The bill was sponsored by four Democrats, who were building on the work of the LEACT Commission, which was created in June 2020 as part of an executive order issued by the governor in response to the police murder of George Floyd. 

The commission issued 45 recommendations, including the use of body cameras for state police and updates to police use-of-force rules, training and education. However, one of the key recommendations for more reliable data collection has yet to be implemented.

“House lawmakers chose to stomp out any and all hopes of giving the New Hampshire public a critical tool for evaluating the interactions of New Hampshire law enforcement and the community members they serve,” said  Joseph Lascaze, a LEACT commission member and smart justice campaign manager at the ACLU of New Hampshire. 

Data collection is required by state police, Lascaze continued, and voting against bringing that to the entire state sends a clear message to New Hampshire residents, especially minorities, that their voices won’t be heard, validated or addressed. 

“We took testimony from community members and commission members across the state about their experiences with law enforcement and discrimination that said this specific recommendation on data collection was imperative to the state,” Lascaze said. 

Although the LEACT Commission recommendations received unanimous support from law enforcement and public safety agencies at the time, many complaints voiced by lawmakers came from police.

“We are deeply disappointed that the concerns used by legislators to kill the bill were introduced by law enforcement representatives who said they publicly supported the passage of this legislation,” Lascaze said.

The bill’s demise undoes much of the work New Hampshire officials said they were dedicated to accomplish.

“States next door to us have this and people in our own state want it,” Lascaze said. “It’s an anomaly to have law enforcement and community support this and for the legislative to absolutely disregard it.”

The bill will not be considered again until the 2024 legislative session unless it’s restructured. In the meantime, members of the ACLU and the LEACT Commission plan to reorganize and re-strategize while deciding on future legislative decisions. 

Lascaze said Tuesday’s vote “made clear that New Hampshire is not concerned enough about the accounts and experiences of minority community members to ensure the fair and equal treatment of them when interacting with New Hampshire law enforcement.”

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