5 thoughts on “Law Enforcement Discrimination Against Blacks”
Especially the so-called Driving While Black charges – drive around, and tell me that you can tell the race of a person in a car near you without it heading towards you. It just isn’t easy, especially at night.
Now, if people (any people) don’t want to be hassled for equipment violations (lights out, etc) then make certain your lights work. Simple as that.
I often thought a good study to test DWB would be compare the racial mix of drivers pulled over in the daytime vs nighttime for that very reason. If police are pulling drivers over based on race, then I’d expect the racial mix to become more aligned with the population at night when the drivers race was impossible to see.
If a police officer is stopped and watching traffic drive by it is pretty easy to identify a black or latino driver.
“Racial disparities are particularly notable in stops by police departments, where Black drivers make up about a third of traffic stops in the hours around midnight, roughly twice the share of white drivers. Local law enforcement officers are especially likely to search Black and Latino drivers during nighttime stops, but discovery rates for contraband or evidence are lower than those of white drivers. ”
“Significant findings from Shoub’s and her colleagues’ analysis of the North Carolina dataset include:
Blacks were 63 percent more likely to be stopped even though, as a whole, they drive 16 percent less. Taking into account less time on the road, blacks were about 95 percent more likely to be stopped.
Blacks were 115 percent more likely than whites to be searched in a traffic stop (5.05 percent for blacks, 2.35 percent for whites).
Contraband was more likely to be found in searches of white drivers.
“So, black drivers were stopped disproportionately more than white drivers compared to the local population and were at least twice as likely to be searched, but they were slightly less likely to get a ticket,” Shoub says. “That correlates with the idea that black drivers were stopped on the pretext of having done something wrong, and when the officer doesn’t see in the car what he thought he might, he tells them to go on their way.””
“During all hours of the day, they found that White Americans biked at almost four times the distance per capita as Black Americans, but Black Americans died at more than 4 times the rate (4.5) per mile cycling than White Americans. Compared to White Americans, Black Americans also experienced traffic deaths at more than twice the rate (2.2) per mile walking, and nearly twice the rate (1.7) per mile driving or riding in a car.”
Especially the so-called Driving While Black charges – drive around, and tell me that you can tell the race of a person in a car near you without it heading towards you. It just isn’t easy, especially at night.
Now, if people (any people) don’t want to be hassled for equipment violations (lights out, etc) then make certain your lights work. Simple as that.
I often thought a good study to test DWB would be compare the racial mix of drivers pulled over in the daytime vs nighttime for that very reason. If police are pulling drivers over based on race, then I’d expect the racial mix to become more aligned with the population at night when the drivers race was impossible to see.
If a police officer is stopped and watching traffic drive by it is pretty easy to identify a black or latino driver.
“Racial disparities are particularly notable in stops by police departments, where Black drivers make up about a third of traffic stops in the hours around midnight, roughly twice the share of white drivers. Local law enforcement officers are especially likely to search Black and Latino drivers during nighttime stops, but discovery rates for contraband or evidence are lower than those of white drivers. ”
https://www.ppic.org/publication/racial-disparities-in-traffic-stops/
“Racial disparities revealed in massive traffic stop dataset
Political science professor discusses book that analyzes 20 million traffic stops”
https://www.sc.edu/uofsc/posts/2020/06/racial_disparities_traffic_stops.php
“Significant findings from Shoub’s and her colleagues’ analysis of the North Carolina dataset include:
Blacks were 63 percent more likely to be stopped even though, as a whole, they drive 16 percent less. Taking into account less time on the road, blacks were about 95 percent more likely to be stopped.
Blacks were 115 percent more likely than whites to be searched in a traffic stop (5.05 percent for blacks, 2.35 percent for whites).
Contraband was more likely to be found in searches of white drivers.
“So, black drivers were stopped disproportionately more than white drivers compared to the local population and were at least twice as likely to be searched, but they were slightly less likely to get a ticket,” Shoub says. “That correlates with the idea that black drivers were stopped on the pretext of having done something wrong, and when the officer doesn’t see in the car what he thought he might, he tells them to go on their way.””
https://www.sc.edu/uofsc/posts/2020/06/racial_disparities_traffic_stops.php
“During all hours of the day, they found that White Americans biked at almost four times the distance per capita as Black Americans, but Black Americans died at more than 4 times the rate (4.5) per mile cycling than White Americans. Compared to White Americans, Black Americans also experienced traffic deaths at more than twice the rate (2.2) per mile walking, and nearly twice the rate (1.7) per mile driving or riding in a car.”
https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/press-releases/racial-disparities-traffic-fatalities/
Harvard, yo.
Harvard.