By David M. Greenwald
Late last year the Davis Joint Police Subcommittee issued a report with a number of recommendations, one of which is to determine why racial disparities exist in arrests, recommended charges and police stops. They also recommend shifting non-violent and low-risk service calls to unarmed personnel.
One of the biggest complaints we have heard over the last 15 years from people of color in Davis has been the so-called “driving while Black” stops—these are pretext stops for minor violations where officers will often do investigations to see if they find things like outstanding warrants or contraband in vehicles. This is also known as racial profiling.
Studies consistently show that the people most often getting caught in these kinds of stops are Black and brown people.
California collects such data in a RIPA (Racial and Identity Profiling Advisory Board) report, and the stop data collected in 2018 and 2019 reveal “patterns of disparities in law enforcement interactions with civilians.” They found that “individuals perceived to be Black were searched at nearly three times the rate of individuals perceived to be White.” In addition, “officers arrested individuals perceived to be Black at nearly 1.6 times the rate as individuals perceived to be White.”
In Davis, the stop data is actually even higher, with Blacks being stopped at a rate five times that of whites.
If Davis wishes to address these kinds of disparities in traffic enforcement, they may want to look at one of the more aggressive policies. The city of Berkeley recently approved a series of policies changes aimed at reducing these disparities.
In a council meeting earlier this week, the Berkeley City Council voted unanimously to support a package preventing Berkeley police from being able to stop drivers solely for minor traffic 
violations that include: equipment violations, expired vehicle registration, or not wearing a seat belt.
The police will only be able to conduct stops for violations “that endanger public safety,” these include excessive speeding, running a red light or stop sign, and driving under the influence.
Those pulled over for a public safety reason can still be cited for low-level offenses.
“While Berkeley has a long history of progressive leadership, we are not immune from issues of systemic racism in policing and our criminal justice system,” Berkeley Mayor Jesse Arreguín told The Appeal.
There is definitely opposition to the new rules, with the Berkeley Police Association opposing the reforms and issuing a statement that they “will turn officers into filing clerks, gutting their much-needed time on the streets within our community.”
While people can question whether a policy for Berkeley works in Davis, Arreguín convened a working group last year on the issue of fair and impartial policing. A 2018 study by the Center for Policing Equity found that “Black and Hispanic people were more than six times more likely than white people to be stopped by the Berkeley Police Department while driving and more than four times more likely to be stopped while walking.”
Those are remarkably similar numbers to the report by Davis Police released last year that showed huge discrepancies in stop data between whites and people of color. In fact, both Berkeley and Davis has discrepancies that exceed those statewide.
The Appeal notes: “Between 2012 and 2016, Berkeley police also searched Black people at a rate nearly 20 times that of white people. Latinx people were searched more than four times as often as white people.”
Despite these stops and searches which are disproportionately on people of color, “police were significantly less likely to uncover contraband during those searches than during searches of white people, according to the study.”
This is a core finding in almost all racial profiling studies that are based on data analysis. The general belief here is that when white people are searched it is more likely to be based on specific evidence that individuals are engaged in wrongdoing, whereas people of color are generally being searched pretextually and when officers search people simply based on things like race and ethnicity, their “hit” rate is far lower.
The Berkeley policy addresses this disparity which indicates, “Berkeley police must also obtain written consent from motorists before doing a search without a warrant.”
“The working group report cited research that showed requiring written consent reduced the number of warrantless vehicle searches by roughly 75 percent,” the Appeal reports.
In additionally, “Officers are also no longer allowed to search a person who is on probation or parole unless the officer believes there is evidence of imminent danger, or that the person has committed a crime or is about to commit a crime.”
That is certain to trigger some pushback as “California law gives police wide discretion to search all people on probation or parole, and people of color are heavily overrepresented among those under community supervision.”
However, “As of the end of June 2019, nonwhite Californians are nearly twice as likely to be on parole as their white counterparts, according to data from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation and the U.S. Census.”
The Berkeley mayor defended the reforms, saying they would “allow officers to focus on more serious and dangerous crimes—and the people who commit them.”
Should Davis look into similar regulations? That would certainly seem warranted, given the long history of complaints in the Black and brown community about things like pretext stops and racial profiling. Defenders of the police will lament the loss of the ability of officers to conduct investigative stops.
But I think one question they should ask themselves—are these kinds of stops warranted? If they are producing a very low hit rate—which they appear to be statistically—it is kind of like stop and frisk, where you end up generating a huge amount of animosity in communities of color without a huge upside.
—David M. Greenwald reporting
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Being an old white privileged guy that has received two tickets for not wearing a seat belt I’m all for this. Ooops, I guess this law was not meant for me but I like it and can save some cash.
So I take it wearing a seat belt isn’t considered public safety? Ummm, okay.
Does a broken tail light endanger public safety or is that considered an unenforceable equipment violation? Hmmm….
So if one only drove their car is Berkeley would they ever have to pay for vehicle registration fees?
“So if one only drove their car is Berkeley would they ever have to pay for vehicle registration fees?”
Apparently that’s a big problem everywhere and the police generally don’t enforce vehicle registration unless they need a reason to pull over a vehicle.
Certainly not my experience. Not only moving, I once had my vehicle ticketed for sitting in front of my house with expired tags.
Another thing I’ve been stopped for, expired tags. I had them but put them aside and hadn’t installed them yet. I guess the cop didn’t check to see that I was an old privileged white man before he stopped me.
Anecdotes do not substitute for or refute systematic data analysis and for good reason.
You mean like the “mowing while black” anecdote that you’ve used on several occasions?
My comment was that you can’t use an anecdote to refute systematic data. Your response suggests you didn’t understand my comment. As a matter of fact, the incident you mention is what caused HRC which I was on at the time to request systamatic stop data, something that we did not get until last summer.
So HRC based their request for data on an anecdote?
On an incident that happened, we wanted to see the full picture.
All anecdotes aren’t created equal.
Doing something stupid is not a cure for doing something evil. Yes, I consider pulling over someone solely because of their race is despicable and racist. The connection made here that somehow not pulling people over for equipment or ‘low level’ offenses is going to cure this is like putting a radioactive bandage on the skin over a failed liver.
Pulling people over for equipment violations IS a safety issue. I’ve almost plowed into people who’s brake light set was out because I couldn’t tell they were stopping. Heavily tinted windows in front (which is illegal) have become a huge problem. When you can’t see the other driver, you can’t make eye contact and you can’t tell if they even are looking your way and see you. This has especially been a problem when riding a bike and having to pass in front of a car I don’t know if they are paying attention. That is a huge safety issue. We stop enforcing these things and it’s going to cause accidents.
I’m beginning to think progressive cities can only elect morons to City Councils. What the héll is wrong with people’s thinking?
This is a comment in Berkeleyside comments I wish to share, attributed to “Ghost Of Cornelius”:
So if a black man is stopped because of expired tags then the problem is that he was not being respected? The problem wasn’t that he was driving around with expired tags?
Now if indeed white men with expired tags were not being pulled over that would indeed constitute a problem. Obviously the correct solution would be to stop them as well thereby ensuring everybody with expired tags gets pulled over regardless of skin color as any sane person would expect.
Choosing however not to stop for expired tags at all is capitulation, not a solution. You don’t fight lawlessness by removing laws or stopping their enforcement. Lack of enforcement leads to anarchy and I can pretty much guarantee any minority member that under anarchy, minorities will be the first to suffer.
Aye, there’s the rub… good points…
Son was “stopped” for having a ‘invalid’ registration tag… the registration was valid, current, but the officer somehow from a distance “noticed” it was on the wrong car… we had two cars at the time, same month, and I put the wrong tag on the wrong car…
The officer would have been right if it had been an expired tag… but it wasn’t… just on the wrong car… officer impounded the vehicle, destroyed the tag (so we could offer no proof of the error)… the reason son was “pulled over”? Driving while a young white male… no other infraction, except wrong tag on wrong car… no way the officer could have discerned that there was a problem from a distance… eagles don’t have that good a vision…
The problem with the proposal, is it is stupid… the policy is not the problem… the minority of individual ‘cops’ (as opposed to ‘police officers’) who act as “thugs”, and/or bigoted, is the problem… the policy isn’t… what if a police officer pulled over a driver (minority) who had a bad tail-light, and discovered that there was a corpse or an “amber alert” kidnapping in progress? That has happened, rare, but it has occurred…
So to fully get back on topic, should Davis follow Bezerkly’s lead, I vote “HELL NO!!!”… but, we should fully sanction, discipline, discharge ANY officer who is not acting in good faith… the pull-over conditions stipulated are infractions, no arrest, just a ticket… many are “fix” citations, where there is no fine, no incarceration.
Yet, if it is obvious that there is more to the equation when a stop occurs, it should be clearly based on observable facts, not bigotry…
BTW, got pulled over for ‘speeding’ on 101, while I was following the flow, having other cars passing me, but I was a young white male… had to to traffic school… mid 1970’s…
While I agree this is a good approach to racial equity in police actions I have a couple of other reasons for supporting this change.
1. Our current system is neither efficient nor cost-effective. As a general principle, a non-safety-related task should be done by the person with the least training and expertise compatible with doing the job well. Just as it is not good policy to send an MD to do a receptionist job, it is not good policy to have a police officer do a clerk’s job. If the issue is really a broken light, or other minor non-compliance, this could be recorded by the police officer or caught on video cam and transferred to a clerk to issue the appropriate ticket of paperwork thus freeing the officer to deal with more dangerous or pressing issues. Obviously, that won’t work if the stop is a ruse.
2. Likewise, we should not be asking the police to do work for which they are not adequately trained, such as dealing with issues of the noncriminal homeless or mental health issues.
I think that right-sizing the police department, and only asking them to do the tasks for which they are trained while not wasting their time on paperwork and other low yield tasks would improve community safety as well as being more cost-effective and efficient.