Via Wikimedia Commons
By Perla Chavez
SAN FRANCISCO, CA – Brian Cox, a public defender from the San Francisco Public Defender’s Office, discusses how San Francisco is deprioritizing certain traffic infractions to mitigate the racial harassment Black people face from pretextual stops, according to an X post in the San Francisco Chronicle, which links to an article on its website.
Cox points out how the Plessy v. Ferguson decision permitted, if not encouraged, institutions to discriminate against Black people until the case Brown v. Board overturned the “separate but equal” doctrine in 1954.
However, added Cox, when the case Whren v. United States put pretextual traffic stops into effect, people with minor traffic infractions were stopped, “as an excuse to detain, question, or search the person or car” which counteracts the Fourth Amendment right of protection against unreasonable search and seizure.
Cox wrote groups such as the California Racial and Identity Profiling Advisory Board have publicly disagreed and spoken out against this practice, calling it, “America’s most egregious police practice.”
Cox explains studies find Black drivers nationally are stopped at higher rates.
“Black people are stopped at nearly seven times the rate as white people, searched at almost 11 times more and subjected to use of force at more than 12 times the rate,” the San Francisco Police Department’s report indicates, said Cox.
According to an analysis from the San Francisco traffic stop data Cox cites, pretextual stops rarely heed positive results.
In fact, Cox notes, “A December 2022 analysis that was presented to the San Francisco Police Commission of nearly 10,000 stops for license plate, registration, taillight and brake light violations – the stops that had significant racial disparities and are most associated with pretextual stops – revealed that officers recovered guns in only 1% of stops and other potentially incriminating evidence in five percent of stops.”
In an effort to address and change the racial disparities, the San Francisco Police Commission is navigating the department in correcting this behavior by deprioritizing petty traffic infractions, Cox said.
Cox adds that “a study of Ramsey County [Minnesota] found that limiting pretextual stops reduced racial disparities in stops and searches with no negative impact on traffic safety or crime, while another study of Virginia’s approach found that disparate treatment of Black drivers decreased significantly, though racial disparities in stops overall remained.”
