Arrests and citations in Oxford hit a six-year low in 2024 as the racial breakdown of police interactions continued to change, Police Chief John Jones shared in an annual data report.
Arrests and citations decreased in Oxford overall in 2024 as arrests of Black people in Oxford jumped to a six-year proportional high, according to data from the Oxford Police Department (OPD).
OPD Chief John Jones shares an annual data report with the Police Community Relations and Review Commission (PCRRC) in May or June each year. The presentation highlights racial and ethnic data for crashes, traffic stops, arrests and citations, as well as age data.
During the 2025 data presentation to the PCRRC May 15, Jones shared data showing that Black people accounted for more than 12% of arrests and citations in Oxford last year. It’s the first time in the past six years that the figure has been above 10%. Arrests and citations for Asian residents, meanwhile, decreased to a new low of 2.2%. White people accounted for more than 80% of all arrests, citations, crashes and traffic stops in Oxford last year, just above the 79.9% of the population identified as white according to U.S. Census data.
Black people make up just 4.8% of Oxford’s population, while Asian people account for 8.3%, according to U.S. Census data. However, census figures also track people who self-identify as two or more races separately. OPD Lieutenant Adam Price explained that officers follow state guidelines to identify the race and gender of people involved in stops rather than asking people for their race, which could become a point of contention. As a result, very few people are listed as racial identities beyond Black, white, Asian, other or unknown in OPD data.
The decrease in arrests and citations for Asian people comes after years of declining international student enrollment at Miami University since the Covid-19 pandemic. In 2019, Asian people represented nearly a fifth of OPD’s stops. Nearly 300 first-year students at Miami in 2018 came from other countries, compared to less than 50 in 2023.
Arrests and citations overall decreased to a six-year low. OPD made just under 1,400 arrests and citations in 2024, compared to more than 1,900 in 2023.
Last year, OPD also began tracking the types of referrals made by its social services liaison. The liaison made a similar number of referrals for the past two years, though the number of referrals related to homelessness nearly doubled, while those related to domestic violence were cut nearly in half.
