Via Flickr
By Andrea Bernal
SAN FRANCISCO, CA – The San Francisco Public Defender’s Office this week detailed how the Coalition to End Biased Stops and its various advocates are celebrating the implementation of a new “pretext stop” policy that limits when police can use certain traffic violations as the “primary reason to conduct a stop.”
The Coalition to End Biased Stops, per the public defender, includes “over 110 traffic safety and civil rights groups that advocated for restricting the San Francisco Police Department’s use of racially-biased pretext traffic stops.”
The new “pretext stop” policy, which was approved in spring 2024 by the S.F. Police Commission and went into effect on July 17, comes with a “Know Your Rights” guide–available on both the Coalition’s website and the S.F. Public Defender’s Office website.
The SF Public Defender clarifies how pretext stops “disproportionately impact Black drivers, cyclists, and pedestrians, who are more often targeted for non-moving or equipment violations.”
The Deputy Public Defender and Director of the S.F. Public Defender Integrity Unit notes, “The primary goal of this policy has always been to keep people safe when they’re pulled over by police, which is vastly more dangerous for a person of color in San Francisco.”
In fact, the office adds, extensive data show “these types of stops are often used as a ‘pretext’ to conduct baseless searches.”
Police Commission Vice President Max Carter-Oberstone said, “The data is clear: pretext stops have been an unmitigated failure. They are a massive waste of resources that do not result in arrests or discovery of contraband. This policy will allow us to reinvest our resources into strategies that actually keep us safe.”
Additionally, this type of over-policing via pretext stops often does not result in “actual traffic citation but can escalate to police use-of-force and even deadly outcomes,” they added.
President of the League of Women Voters of San Francisco maintains, “For too long, SFPD has disproportionately targeted and harmed people of color via pretext stops. That ends now.”
