The senseless murders of countless persons of color during routine traffic stops underscore the urgent need to eliminate harmful law enforcement practices that disproportionately target Black and Brown communities.
For many years, police have engaged in pretextual traffic stops. It’s a practice in which an officer stops someone under the pretext of a minor traffic violation in hopes of catching them for a different crime. As a law enforcement tactic, pretextual traffic stops are highly ineffective. An analysis of Nashville’s Metropolitan Police Department found no relationship between crime and the number of police stops. And a study from Fayetteville, North Carolina found that the police department’s decision to end traffic stops for minor traffic violations caused crime to fall as a result.
Pretextual traffic stops not only fail to reduce crime, but encourage racial profiling and endanger the safety and economic wellbeing of people of color. Fines and fees for traffic violations disproportionately burden low-income Black and Brown communities. And Black Americans are more than three times as likely than white Americans to be killed during a police encounter, according to a study published in PLOS One.
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