The Disproportionate Risks of Driving While Black
One change is already in place: Officers now must give every stopped motorist a card explaining how to file a complaint.
.. “It means whites are ‘getting away’ with very low-level offenses, while people who are poor or people of color are suffering consequences.”
“It amounts to harassment,” she said. “And police cannot demonstrate that it is creating better public safety.” To the contrary, she added, it makes minority citizens less likely to help the police prevent and solve crimes.
.. Like Chief Scott of Greensboro, he deploys more officers in high-crime areas and faces constant demands from citizens to assign even more. But, Chief Medlock said, “they are not asking for more traffic stops.”
.. Not everyone is cheering. This month, Chief Medlock, who is white, found a racist flyer in his front yard that he regarded as a personal threat. On the back was an application for the Ku Klux Klan.
.. Yet traffic codes are so minutely drawn that virtually every driver will break some rule within a few blocks, experts say. “The traffic code is the best friend of the police officer,”
.. In an interview, Mr. Maryland said Officer Christopher Cline had told him that his registration had expired, although it was clearly valid for 15 more days. The officer then said Ms. McRae, sitting in the back seat, “looked like someone” and asked to search her purse. Officers do not have to tell drivers or their passengers that they have the right to refuse, and like the vast majority of people, Ms. McRae agreed. The officer found a small amount of marijuana and several grams of cocaine and arrested her.
.. Since 2010, officers searched blacks more than twice as often but found contraband only 21 percent of the time, compared with 27 percent of the time with whites.
.. Five times as many blacks as whites were arrested on that charge, despite evidence whites use marijuana about as often.
.. A judge eventually dismissed their cases. But in the meantime, Mr. Phillips said, a job offer was thrown into limbo when a background check turned up the pending criminal charge.
.. The department not only rejected all allegations in the complaint that she and Mr. Fields filed, they said, but the complaint seemed to backfire. Every night for a month after they filed it, Mr. Fields said, a patrol car parked outside his house.