My name is Claudia Wilner, and I’m the Litigation and Advocacy Director at NCLEJ. As we approach Giving Tuesday, I’d like to talk to you about how your donation helps us combat racially discriminatory policing in Buffalo.
We are suing the City of Buffalo over racially discriminatory traffic enforcement by the Buffalo Police Department (BPD). Our lawsuit, Black Love Resists in the Rust v. City of Buffalo, charges that the BPD’s practices targeting Black and Latine communities in Buffalo, which were designed to harvest revenue for the City budget, violate the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments of the Constitution, and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act.
In 2013, the City established a program of traffic checkpoints in which the BPD stopped minority drivers without any suspicion of wrongdoing and issued tickets for as many alleged violations as possible. The BPD ran over 1,600 checkpoints, placing them in predominantly Black and Latine neighborhoods seven times as often as in predominantly white neighborhoods. Minority Buffalonians received over three times as many traffic citations compared to nonminority individuals relative to their population.
The BPD violated the civil rights of minority residents daily, and we are fighting to secure relief and reform for thousands of Buffalonians who were affected by these discriminatory practices.
The National Center for Law and Economic Justice advances racial and economic justice through ground-breaking impact litigation, policy advocacy, and support for grassroots organizing. We have provided legal representation and support since 1965.