Blacks are indeed pulled over more than whites. Here is some data for 2008 traffic stops.
• 8.4% of all drivers were pulled over in a traffic stop that year.
• 9.9% of male drivers were stopped, 7.0% of female drivers.
• 8.4% of white drivers were stopped, 8.8% of black drivers were stopped, and 9.1% of hispanic drivers were stopped.
• Speeding was the most common reason for being stopped.
• 85% of drivers felt the stop was legitimate. This breaks down as 86% of white drivers thought the stop was legitimate, 74% for black drivers, and 82% for hispanic drivers.
• 5% of stops led to a search of the driver, the vehicle, or both. Male drivers were more likely to be searched than female drivers (7.4% vs. 1.6%). By race, it was 3.9% for whites, 12.3% for blacks, and 5.8% for hispanics.
• Black or African American alone, percent definition and source info Black or African American alone, percent, 2013 (a) 13.2%
• American Indian and Alaska Native alone, percent definition and source info American Indian and Alaska Native alone, percent, 2013 (a) 1.2%
• Asian alone, percent definition and source info Asian alone, percent, 2013 (a) 5.3%
• Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander alone, percent definition and source info Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander alone, percent, 2013 (a) 0.2%
• Two or More Races, percent definition and source info Two or More Races, percent, 2013 2.4%
• Hispanic or Latino, percent definition and source info Hispanic or Latino, percent, 2013 (b) 17.1%
• White alone, not Hispanic or Latino, percent definition and source info White alone, not Hispanic or Latino, percent, 2013 62.6%
Although they can't pull you over for being black. What they will/do say is "In our experience whenever we see a black guy and a white guy in a beat up car in this neighborhood, they are usually buying drugs." Sometimes they just don't have a reason so they manufacture one.
""Did that just yesterday. What cemented my decision to issue a cite was the fact that the operator was on the cell phone (the reason he didn't signal) and didn't even get off the phone with me standing at his window. I had to ask him if he wouldn't mind getting off the phone to talk to me."
Sounds like time for one of those discretionary arrests for a traffic violation."
Just wow. A lot of the responses on this forum are incredibly entitled, power trip-y, and precisely why no one trusts cops anymore.
Well, to be fair, talking while on the phone is a safety issue. Though yeah, I agree, a lot of the posts are basically "I arrested him because he disrespected mah authoritah".
This certainly wasn't the case here and it a great many cases the officer won't be able to discern the race of driver until stopped. Now there may be some truth to the matter of what happens after a stop.
As for the pull over, out of state tags and not signaling when a cop is coming up on you just makes you a good choice to pull over.
Given the fact that the officer made a u-turn in order to speedily follow her car way before the "failure to signal" happened, it seems to me watching the video without pretty much any context, that the lane change was merely an excuse to pull her over.
Any police officers knows if they really need such an excuse, they just need to follow a given car for a few minutes: it's guaranteed something will happen which justifies the traffic stop.
> Any police officers knows if they really need such an excuse, they just need to follow a given car for a few minutes
And the worst thing is they tail you when they follow you, making you nervous and more likely to make a mistake. That's also what the officer did here.
Tailgating is illegal (at least, here in the UK) precisely because it is so dangerous, for many reasons including the one you point out. Of course, that doesn't apply to officers of the law.
Illegal here in the US as well. Doesn't stop cops though. Seriously, this must be standard operating procedure for cops, happens to me all the time (and I'm white, fwiw). It usually doesn't result in me getting pulled over, but it's nerve-racking. Which I imagine is intended...
Tailgating does apply to officers of the law, they need to act in a way that reduces the possibility of serious harm proportional to any criminals being pursued. Police on duty can be guilty of DWDC&A or dangerous driving.
The video starts with a woman who was given an information-only warning. Was that woman white or black? Officers don't know who they pull over, but they do know who they ticket and who they let off.
When someone says "I saw you driving fast behind me, and I got out of your way" the correct response is probably "oh, thank you maam, I misunderstood. Sorry for pulling you over. You have a nice day" or somesuch.
Indeed. Blatant honest racism is just one sort, but there is racism that is built into the system (like how white killers are mentally ill in the media, while black killers are called thugs), or unconsciously part of how you think (see http://www.forbes.com/sites/toddessig/2014/09/21/racism-from... ).
Note the following shows a 50% difference in call back rates based on name alone, with identical resumes, which is pretty relevant for techies looking at resumes. http://www.nber.org/digest/sep03/w9873.html
> Note the following shows a 50% difference in call back rates based on name alone, with identical resumes, which is pretty relevant for techies looking at resumes. http://www.nber.org/digest/sep03/w9873.html
I've heard that's much less about race than about class; Jamal may be a predominately black name but even more than that it's a predominately poor name. I'd be interested to see a replication that watched the names by average income/education/similar - or one that used stereotypically rich and poor names within the same race.
America is also a pretty classist place, but for me the people you hear saying "it's about class, not race" are mainly working to ignore that America is a pretty racist place. And indeed, part of why it's easy to make that argument is that almost all of America's history involves racial discrimination to create and magnify class distinction. See, e.g.: http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/05/the-case...
I'd be interested to see how the study you suggest turns out, but I wouldn't expect it to be much different; there's too much other evidence of purely racial bias.
Race and class are tightly bound in America. But there are some things in the study that are at least suggestive that it's a racial difference.
First they attempted to assess names race, and got rid of names that were insufficiently suggestive of race.
The study varied postal addresses and included African American names from richer neighborhoods and whites from poorer neighborhoods, and included both low and high quality resumes. Hypothetically, if people were associating black names with low class more then white names, then there should be a significant difference in the benefits of a "good" neighborhood between whites with a good neighborhood and blacks. There was none.
Further, one would assume that if class was the determining factor, then a better quality of resume might offset this. It did, but to a lesser degree for African American Names... that is, whites got more effect from a better resume then blacks did.
A white name was, by the researchers estimates, the equivalent of an additional eight years of experience for black people.
If being perceived as black, or if names that are predominantly understood as black are sufficient to assign a person to a lower class, I'd argue that that's inherently racial discrimination.
The latest meme is that black killers are 'thugs' while white killers are 'mentally ill' in the media. It doesn't take much effort to find the media calling mentally ill black killers mentally ill.
