The Metropolitan Police Department on Monday released long-delayed and hotly anticipated data on the citizen stops its officers are conducting, shedding early light on police practices that some minority communities say have unfairly targeted them.

According to the data, which was collected for a four-week period from July 22 to August 18, police officers conducted 11,600 stops across the city, both of motorists and others. For every 100 stops conducted, the department reported that 60 percent resulted in a traffic ticket and 20 percent led to an arrest. The remaining 20 percent were said to have been stopped as part of an investigation, which can range from someone acting erratically to someone matching the description of a criminal suspect.

The collection and release of additional data on police stops—who is being stopped and why, and whether they are frisked or otherwise searched prior to an arrest—was required by the NEAR Act, a criminal-justice reform bill passed by the D.C. Council in 2016. But delays by MPD in complying with the law prompted the ACLU of D.C. to sue the city in May 2018; six months later, a judge ordered the police department to start collecting and releasing the data.

Similar efforts to collect and publicize data on police practices—notably Terry stops, better known as stop-and-frisk—have taken place in other cities across the country, notably in New York City, where claims of racial profiling in stop-and-frisks conducted by officers resulted in a significant legal ruling against the police department. Fights over stop data have also taken place in Chicago, Los Angeles, and Philadelphia.

The portion of the D.C. data police-reform advocates most awaited seemed to back suspicions that police stops often disproportionately impact minorities.

Of all stops recorded in the four-week period, 70 percent were of African Americans, 15 percent of whites and 7 percent of Hispanics. The rate among African Americans was lower in traffic stops (61 percent), but higher in stops that did not result in a ticket or arrest (86 percent). African Americans currently make up just under half of the city’s population.

“I’m not surprised to see there’s a significant racial disparity in terms of the stops. That confirms what we’ve been hearing from community member for years. Whether there’s a legitimate explanation for that remains to be seen,” said Scott Michelman, the legal co-director of the ACLU of D.C.

The ACLU found similar racial disparities in arrest data for the years 2013 to 2017 it obtained from MPD through an open records request. But Police Chief Peter Newsham cautioned against reading too much into the initial trove of data released on Monday.

“This report is a snapshot of what our stops look like for a four-week period, but we don’t know what they should look like,” Newsham said. “It’s too early to be upset.”

Newsham says the police department’s demographics mirror that of the city, and that officers undergo extensive training—including a new program with the National Museum of African American History and Culture on racial sensitivity. The report D.C. released alongside the data says that expecting police stops to be even across racial groups is too simplistic.

“There are many reasons why a simple comparison of demographics between those who live in D.C. and those who are stopped in D.C. cannot accurately answer the question of bias,” reads the report. “Fundamentally, bias needs to be measured in comparison to the rate of behavior that should lead to a police stop. An appropriate measure has thus far eluded researchers.”

The report says that the data collection coincided with a spike in crime in certain parts of the city, and that calls for police service related to violent crime were higher in the police districts encompassing Wards 7 and 8, which are predominantly African American.

The report also says that 86 percent of all stops were resolved without a frisk or pre-arrest search, and that three of four stops were resolved in 15 minutes or less. Still, searches were more likely to be conducted in the police districts encompassing Wards 7 and 8 than anywhere else in the city—20 percent and 35 percent the Sixth and Seventh Districts, compared to 17 percent in the Fifth District (which includes Ward 5) and 4 percent in the Second District (which includes largely white Wards 2 and 3.)

But for Michelman, the potentially damaging content of the data explains the delays in getting it released.

“I think it’s highly relevant that his office has resisted even collecting this data for years and years. You have to ask yourself why. The most likely explanation is they were embarrassed by what the data would show, that there would be a huge racial disparity and that they would be left to explain themselves,” he said.

Newsham says he would be willing to work with an outside consultant or research firm to assess the data as it is collected to better determine whether police officers are disproportionately stopping African Americans. He said a 2006 study commissioned by the department found that not to be the case, but the independent D.C. Office of Police Complaints said methodology concerns called into question the study’s reliability.

He also says that if anyone feels they were unfairly treated or targeted by a D.C. police officer, they can rely on another relatively new advancement in local policing.

“One of the things we’re very proud of in this city is that if somebody feels as though their stop was unjust, all of our police officers have body-worn cameras. And they make complaints to an independent agency, the Office of Police Complaints,” he said.

But critics say that the footage from body-worn cameras is often impossible to get, especially in high-profile cases like police-involved shootings. Still, the Office of Police Complaints itself said in its 2018 annual report that the “availability and access to BWC footage that illustrates the actual actions and conduct of officers and complainants is a powerful accountability tool.”

Ward 5 Councilmember Kenyan McDuffie says the data still needs to be analyzed and more will need to be collected before any trends can be spotted, but he believes that the data collection that started this summer can start “difficult conversations” the city and department may have to have around how communities are policed.

“Transparency is critical to good policing, and this data increases transparency and will hopefully get us closer to better police-community relations,” he said. “While disparities are disheartening, they are not surprising. But it’s important because with the data and the continued reporting that’s going to come by MPD, I think we can make really sound and data-driven policy decisions.”

Newsham says he’s he willing to entertain those conversations and changes, provided they’re what the data say is necessary.

“We obviously intend to look at it closely internally,” he said of the stop data that’s being collected. “Once we know what we should look like as a city with regards to these stops, then there may be a point where we’ve gotta say we have to change course. There may be, but there also may not be.”

This story originally appeared on WAMU.