African American

kwassa

(23,340 posts) Mon Sep 1, 2014, 04:49 PM Sep 2014

Investigatory police stops vs. regular traffic stops: what white people don't see.

(I am cross-posting this from GD because I expect this to sink like a stone, and I think this is a really important article.)

The first kind generally happen only to those who are Driving While Black. The second are the type that everyone gets, and whites generally think are the only type that exist.

Here is a terrific short article on the subject, which will demonstrate the problems generated

How to rebuild trust between the police and African Americans

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/how-to-rebuild-trust-between-the-police-and-african-americans/2014/08/29/77c59ace-2d50-11e4-994d-202962a9150c_story.html

The incidents described above are called investigatory stops. Unlike traffic-safety stops, in which the purpose is to sanction safety violations, investigatory stops are intended to check whether a person is engaged in serious criminal activity. Our interviews revealed that while whites are quite familiar with traffic-safety stops, they have little experience with investigatory stops. But half of all stops reported by blacks were investigatory.

...........................................................

Police seek to justify investigatory stops as a way to fight crime proactively in high-crime areas, and it is true that these stops occasionally uncover illegal drugs and weapons. But this comes at a cost of stopping large numbers of innocent people. This “numbers game,” as police sometimes call it, sacrifices the dignity and trust of hundreds who are innocent to find one who is guilty.

There is a way forward: Rein in investigatory stops. African Americans resent not so much the police but a particular type of police activity. They, like whites, accept police stops made for a clear violation and not as a pretext to question and search. A black man who has been stopped many times told us, “If I’m at the wrong, you know, I could admit to it. If I’m clocked speeding, and I know I was speeding, I can accept that. But not when I’m harassed or, like I said, I’ve had a gun drawn at me for any particular reason and he wanted me to step out of the car, and raise my hands and all that.”

.........................................................

The problem is not police stops — it is investigatory stops. These stops poison blacks’ attitudes toward the police — and toward the law itself. They undermine police effectiveness and turn the citizens of a democracy into the controlled — and resentful —subjects of a security state. It’s time to end them.