American Indian women in Minneapolis were stopped, searched and arrested at higher rates last year than any other demographic group, including black men, according to a new study from St. Catherine University.

And while, citywide, a majority of police stops were for traffic violations, American Indians were mostly stopped on the basis of being "suspicious persons," the report found.

"It definitely is going to have an impact on people's lives, when we think about family stability, income," Marina Gorsuch, an economics and political science professor at St. Kate's, said of the study's implications. "So even though we can't say why they're happening, this is a clear alarm bell of saying that this is happening."

The study's authors — Gorsuch, economics Prof. Deborah Rho, and student researcher Nicole Busker, senior economics and business administration major — said the disparities were the result of "a complicated interplay of underlying factors" and didn't necessarily indicate racial bias on the part of police.