Kingston's police chief apologized to the city's black community Thursday after a controversial study found officers are more likely to stop black people than whites.

"Especially to the black community and the aboriginal community where there's disparities, we apologize. I apologize. I'm not asking any police officer to apologize in this room," Chief William Closs said after the findings of the study were released to the Kingston Police Services Board.

"My police officers have the right to leave this room and walk tall with pride. What we're doing wrong if we're doing anything wrong is systemic and that's my problem. So I apologize to the black community, the aboriginal community and we'll do better."

The one-year study is reportedly the first of its kind by a Canadian police force.

While white people accounted for 92.7 per cent of the population, according to a 2001 census, they accounted for 92.6 per cent of all stops.

Meanwhile, black people comprised 0.6 per cent of the population; however, they accounted for 2.2 per cent of all stops. This means they were 3.67 times more likely to be stopped than other members of the population.

"The data suggest that black people are more likely to be stopped and questioned by the Kingston police than people from other racial backgrounds," says the report's author Scot Wortley, associate professor at the University of Toronto's Centre of Criminology.

"However, the level of black over-representation varies significantly by the benchmarking method used."

The findings were not surprising to the black community.

Selwyn Pieters of the Association of Black Law Enforcers told CTV's Ottawa affiliate CJOH News that the pilot project was great because "it confirms what the community in Kingston was complaining about all along."

Native people are 1.6 per cent of Kingston's population, however they accounted for 2.2 per cent of police stops. This indicated they were 1.38 times more likely to be stopped than other members of the population.

Wortley writes in the study: "Native people also appear to be overrepresented in police stops. However, native over-representation is eliminated once we control for individuals who have been stopped on multiple occasions."

The study showed all other racial minorities, including Asians, South Asians, or Hispanic people, were less likely to be stopped than white people.

The numbers indicate Asians make up 2.5 per cent of the population, and accounted for 1.0 per cent of stops; while Hispanic people are 0.6 per cent of the population and accounted for 0.4 per cent of the stops.

According to the study's findings, age and gender were also linked with police stops. Males and youths, regardless of race, were more likely to be stopped than women and older people.

"Young black males, between 15 and 24 years of age, are more likely to experience a police stop than any other demographic group," says the study.

"Black people are, however, slightly more likely to be arrested or charged during police stops than people from other racial groups."

Meanwhile, the data suggest that racial minorities are not more likely to be searched by the police than white people.

Wortley applauded the study as "an important first step in the examination -- and hopefully elimination -- of racially biased policing in Canada."

However, he also cautioned that "without direct action and monitoring -- the debate over racially biased policing will continue."

The information was recorded by Kingston police from October 1, 2003 to September 30, 2004. Police filled out cards identifying the age, sex and race of the person they stopped during the one-year period.

"This meant that, when a police officer interrogated, suspected, searched, warned, charged or completed a police computer check on a person, whether on the street or in a vehicle, race/ethnicity data were to be collected," Closs says in a statement released in March.

Closs writes that what troubled the Kingston police was "the almost complete absence of sound operational research in a Canadian context."

The chief also writes that while he does not believe Kingston police intentionally engage in systematic acts of racial profiling, it is essential that "any public service be willing to allow itself to be examined carefully and objectively in order to ensure accountability and transparency."

Now, the chief is looking to the future of the police force.

"What we do now is we try and figure out if those stops were legitimate or illegitimate, but more importantly what we do is start getting into what I would consider some pretty productive discussions about what's going on in the streets of Kingston," he said, appearing on CTV Newsnet's Countdown on Thursday evening.

With a report from CJOH's Anna-Karina Tabunar