Traffic Stops
DRIVING WHILE BLACK Tracking unspoken law-enforcement racism - Jan. 29, 2007 | Gary Webb | Esquire (Must Read!)
"Driving While Black" on Long Island - YouTube - Aug 18, 2008; 1nyctvproducer; (nine minutes)
Watch the disturbing result when a young black man drives at night into a white residential neighborhood on Long Island.
Driving While Black: Race, Space and Mobility in America | PBS Video 1:55:23
Suspect Citizens: What 20 Million Traffic Stops Tells Us about Policing and Race
Frank R. Baumgartner, Richard J. Richardson Distinguished Professor of Political Science University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill ; Derek A. Epp, Assistant Professor of Government University of Texas at Austin; Kelsey Shoub, Assistant Professor of Political Science, TBA
November 2, 2017 Cambridge University Press
Police Reform Project – Empire Justice Center
A large-scale analysis of racial disparities in police stops across the United States
May 4, 2020 Nature Human Behaviour volume 4, pages 736–745 (2020)
Pretextual Traffic Stops Injustice For Minority Drivers
Kathleen M. O'day Annotated Bibliography
Spring 1998 | The University of Dayton School of Law
Racial Disparities In Traffic Stop Outcomes
Frank R. Baumgartner, Leah Christiani, Derek A. Epp, Kevin Roach, Kelsey Shoub
Duke Forum for Law & Social Change Vol. 9:21 2017
Racial/Ethnic Disparities In Traffic Stops: Analysis Of Vermont State Police Data, 2010-15
Stephanie Seguino Professor Department of Economics University of Vermont Burlington, VT 05401 stephanie.seguino@uvm.edu and Nancy Brooks Visiting Associate Professor Dept. of City and Regional Planning Cornell University Ithaca, NY USA 14853 nb275@cornell.edu
June 2016
Collecting, Analyzing, and Responding to Stop Data: A Guidebook for Law Enforcement Agencies, Government, and Communities
Center for Policing Equity & the Policing Project at NYU School of Law
state lawmakers are pushing new bills to reduce reliance on police
So far in 2021, lawmakers in several states have introduced at least 12 bills to shrink the footprint of policing.
February 2, 2021 | Meg O’Connor | theappeal.org
Bureau of Justice Statistics – Traffic Stops
The Stanford Open Policing Project
The Stanford Open Policing Project tutorials: how to use their data in your own work
The Problem Of Infra-Marginality In Outcome Tests For Discrimination
By Camelia Simoiu, Sam Corbett-Davies And Sharad Goel | Stanford University Technical Paper
Virginia Community Policing Act Data Collection | Virginia Open Data Portal
Get Informed About Police Reform in Virginia! Part I | Facebook
Justice Forward VA, Get Informed About Police Reform Part II, Pretextual Policing - YouTube
Racial and Identity Profiling Act (ca.gov)
One of the responsibilities of the RIPA Board has been to develop the stop-data collection process, that has been included into Regulation
AB 953: The Racial and Identity Profiling Act of 2015 | State of California - Department of Justice - Office of the Attorney General
Article 2 of the Regulation (CCR 999.225 (pdf)), identifies law enforcement agencies subject to stop-data collection
Article 3 of the Regulation (CCR 999.26 (pdf)) identifies the data elements to be reported,
Background on the underlying Racial and Identity Profiling Act (RIPA) regulations
The categories of information an officer must collect for each stop
A copy of the report is available here.
A fact sheet on the 2021 RIPA report is available here.
A copy of the report appendices is available here.
More information about the Board is available here.
RIPA Board Report 2018 (ca.gov)
Driving While Black (cornell.edu)
Driving While Black - The Atlantic - July 2009 | James Warren
Video - ABC News, Frontline: Driving While Black. Part I and Part II
Video - Driving While Black on Long Island
Cartoon Video, Driving While Black, produced by Urban Entertainment
Thomas Sowell, professor at Stanford University on his personal experiences of DWB
Michele Bratcher Goodwin, professor at University of Minnesota, on her personal experience of DWB
Baltimore Sun article on Maryland settlement
"The Stories, the Statistics, and the Law: While Driving While Black Matters"
Social Science Critiques Articles
Harris, The Stories, the Statistics, and the Law: While Driving While Black Matters,84 Minn. L. Rev. 265.
"The Depressing Cycle of Racial Accusation"
Profiling: A Covertly Racist Nation Rides a Vicious Cycle
Brooklyn Center Mayor Unveils Plan to Decrease Police Traffic Enforcement Powers
The proposal by Mike Elliott, if passed by City Council, would also create a department of unarmed professionals trained to respond to mental health needs.
May 8, 2021 | Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg | The Appeal
PBS Documentary, 'Driving While Black,' Examines Long Road Of Racism : NPR
A Brief History Of Driving While Black (buzzfeednews.com)
Racial Profiling | American Civil Liberties Union (aclu.org)
Driving While Black: Racial Profiling On Our Nation's Highways | American Civil Liberties Union (aclu.org)
June 1999 Special Report | David A. Harris, University of Toledo College of Law
Driving while Black: How police racism endangered three generations of my family (nbcnews.com)
As my father — and life — taught me, it doesn't matter how carefully you drive or how respectfully you behave. And now I must teach my daughter this, too. May 5, 2021 | Michael H. Cottman - Opinion | NBCNews
ACLU Research Report: Reckless Lawmaking - How Debt-Based Driver's License Suspension Laws Impose Harm and Waste Resources
Emily Dindial, ACLU Policy Counsel, Emily Greytak, ACLU Director of Research, and Kana Tateishi, former ACLU Graduate Research Intern
April 2021
LA (Finally) Will Explore Alternatives To Armed Police In Traffic Enforcement
By Robert Garrova
Published Feb 23, 2021 2:57 PM
Watchdog’s Report Finds Racial Disparities In LAPD Traffic Stops
By Robert Garrova
Published Oct 27, 2020 3:53 PM
Review Of Stops Conducted By The Los Angeles Police Department In 2019
Conducted by the Office of The Los Angeles Police Commission Inspector General
October 27, 2020
LAPD searches blacks and Latinos more. But they’re less likely to have contraband than whites
By Ben Poston, Cindy Chang | Los Angeles Times
Oct. 8, 2019
California city moves to replace police with unarmed civilians for traffic stops
Berkeley city council members approve landmark reform measure aiming to fight racial profiling
Jul 15, 2020 | Sam Levin
Berkeley City Council Passes Sweeping Reforms To Limit Police Traffic Stops
In an effort to end systemic racism, the California city will aim to reduce the number of police-involved traffic stops for expired registrations and other small violations.
Joshua Vaughn | The Appeal | Feb 23, 2021
The Science of Justice: Berkley Police Department National Justice Database City Report
Kim Shayo Buchanan, Enrique Pouget, Phillip Atiba Goff | Center for Policing Equity
May 2018 (PDF)
Oakland police change tactics to reduce number of traffic stops
Nov 18, 2019 | Haaziq Madyun
Cambridge is considering shifting ‘routine traffic enforcement’ away from police. Here’s what to know.
The proposed policy was criticized by the city's police commissioner.
July 30, 2020 | Arianna MacNeill | Boston.com
“Routine traffic stops disproportionately impact Black and Brown drivers, who are pulled over and searched more often than white drivers, leading to potentially stressful interactions with the police,” reads part of the proposed policy, put forth by Councilors Quinton Zondervan and Jivan Sobrinho-Wheeler. “This racist outcome is not the result of biases by individual officers, although those may play a role, but rather is primarily the result of systemic biases, including overpolicing in Black neighborhoods, and training of police officers to be hypervigilant and to expect violent resistance, despite such incidents being very rare.”
St. Louis Park Police Department’s role debated
Aug 4, 2020 | Seth Rowe
Montgomery Co. Exploring Whether to Reassign Traffic Stops Away From Police
However, under Maryland state law, only sworn officers are given authority to enforce traffic law
Sep. 9, 2020 | Adam Tuss
Lansing Police Department will no longer stop motorists for secondary traffic violations
Jul 2, 2020
Primary and Secondary Traffic Violations
The difference between primary and secondary enforcement of traffic offenses.
By Riccola Voigt, Attorney
NYPD should stop making traffic stops, attorney general says
September 25, 2020 | By Michael R. Sisak | AP |
An Empirical Assessment of Pretextual Stops and Racial Profiling
Stephen Rushin & Griffin Edwards | Stanford Law Review Volume 73 (March 2021)
Traffic Without the Police
Stanford Law Review Vol. 73, 2021 (76 pages)
Jan 21, 2021 | Jordan Blair Woods
What Traffic Enforcement Without Police Could Look Like
Because traffic stops all too often escalate into deadly incidents, calls have grown to disentangle traffic enforcement from police—and a measure to do so has already passed in Berkeley, California.
Jan 13, 2021 | Meg O’Connor | The Appeal
A Florida Lawmaker Introduced Legislation To Remove Traffic Enforcement From Police
Cities across the country have begun exploring traffic enforcement without police. This bill proposes doing so statewide.
Mar 5, 2021 | Meg O’Connor | The Appeal
A Path To Non-Police Enforcement Of Civil Traffic Violations
The Justice Collaborative Institute August 2020 | Sara A. Seo Professor of Law, Columbia Law School
‘Driving While Black’: Law professor discusses ‘racial territoriality’ and racism on America’s roads – The Daily Free Press
Feb 17, 2022 | Ava Berger, Emily Pauls, Jasmine Grant
Inside 100 million police traffic stops: New evidence of racial bias (nbcnews.com) - Stanford researchers found that black and Latino drivers were stopped more often than white drivers, based on less evidence of wrongdoing.
Mar 13, 2019 | Erik Ortiz | NBCNews
An Assessment of Traffic Stops and Policing Strategies in Nashville
Prepared by the Policing Project at New York University School of Law
Rhode Island Consent Search Ban: TITLE 31Motor and Other Vehicles CHAPTER 31-21.2 Comprehensive Community-Police Relationship Act of 2015 § 31-21.2-5. Law enforcement practices.
Driving While Black: Effects of Race, Ethnicity, and Gender on Citizen Self-Reports of Traffic Stops and Police Actions | Office of Justice Programs (ojp.gov) - Journal: Criminology Volume: 41 Issue: 1 Dated: February 2003 Pages: 195-220
Driving While Black: Racial Profiling on Our Nation's Highways | Office of Justice Programs (ojp.gov) - David Harris 1999
The pervasiveness of racial profiling by the police in drug law enforcement is the result of an escalation in the war on drugs. Drug use and drug selling are not confined to racial and ethnic minorities; in fact, five times as many whites use drugs. The war on drugs, however, has targeted people of color and skin color has now become a proxy for criminality. Consequences of racial profiling in law enforcement are evident in the demographics of the prison population . . . blacks constitute 13 percent of drug users in the United States, 37 percent of those arrested on drug charges, 55 percent of those convicted, and 74 percent of all drug offenders sentenced to prison.
Driving while Black: police continue to profile, stop and search African-American Drivers | News | insightnews.com Jul 31, 2019
Pretext Traffic Stops: Whren v. United States
FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin Volume: 65 Issue: 11 Dated: (November 1996)
This article explains the facts and the rationale of the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Whren v. United States (1996), and implications are drawn for law enforcement.
The Long Road to Ending Pretextual Stops
Nov 4, 2020 | Maddy Gates | Amicus | Harvard Civil Rights – Civil Liberties Law Review
Police ‘Pretext’ Traffic Stops Need to End, Some Lawmakers Say
Sep 3, 2020 | Marsha Mercer | Pew | Stateline Article
A large-scale analysis of racial disparities in police stops across the United States
May 4, 2020 | Nature Human Behavior
Supplementary Material for “Language from police body camera footage shows racial disparities in officer respect”
June 2017 | PNAS
SCPD Rules and Procedures Chapter 13 Records/Reporting Procedure Section 9 Traffic Stop Data Collection
Departmental General Order No. 20-10; last amended 03/13/20
August 12, 2013 Landmark Decision of U.S. District Court Judge Shira A. Scheindlin - NYPD Stop-and-Frisk Class Action
- U.S. District Court in the Southern District of New York
March 12, 2021 Report and Recommendation of U.S. Magistrate Judge Lois Bloom - U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of NY (Plaintiffs #1 - #21 v Suffolk County, SCPD . . . )
The John F. Finn Institute for Public Safety, Inc. Traffic Stops by Suffolk County Police (September 2020) - released October 2020