DETROIT — Earlier this spring, a Detroit resident named Michelle was driving to work in Grosse Pointe Park with her radio tuned to news of Derek Chauvin’s murder trial when an officer pulled her over.
She’d made a turn on a green light and used her signal, and she didn’t know why the officer stopped her. He told her he had probable cause but didn’t give a reason, she said. Michelle, 48, thinks she was pulled over for “driving while Black.”
The officer let her go without a ticket, but the encounter rattled her.
“Now I’m afraid to do business over there, anywhere where I’m afraid I’ll get followed,” said Michelle, who asked that her last name not be disclosed out of fear of losing her job. “I asked my parents, for my next birthday gift … just get me a bike.”
While cases such as the shooting of Daunte Wright in Minnesota have captured headlines across the country, experts say for every deadly police encounter that began with a traffic stop, there are thousands more Americans who survived but still suffer. Black drivers and other people of color are acutely aware that “to make one wrong move can be potentially fatal” when police pull them over, said Jennifer Cobbina, associate professor in the School of Criminal Justice at Michigan State University.
An NPR investigation found that police officers have fatally shot at least 135 unarmed Black men and women nationwide since 2015. More than a quarter of the deadly shootings happened during traffic stops.
Several local Black residents told the Detroit Free Press that they feel they have been racially profiled when police in metro Detroit have stopped them, sometimes repeatedly, for minor traffic violations or equipment infractions. Their experiences ranged from aggravating to humiliating to traumatizing. Some said they live in fear for themselves or their loved ones.
“While we are all attracted to and captivated by and focused on the George Floyds of the world … every single day there are hundreds of thousands of people who come into contact with police officers who may leave those encounters without even receiving a ticket but whose lives have been turned upside down just by the terror of having had that encounter,” said Mark Fancher, staff attorney for the Racial Justice Project of the ACLU of Michigan.
Traffic stops are the most common reasons that people come in contact with police, with roughly 20 million stops each year in America. Nationally, research shows racial disparities in police stops. The Stanford Open Policing Project analyzed nearly 100 million traffic stops across the country and found evidence of bias against Black and Hispanic drivers when it comes to who officers decide to stop and who they subsequently search.
Some Michigan law enforcement agencies say they are reviewing their traffic stop data and eyeing policies intended to address the disproportionate impact on communities of color.
But not all police officials agree that there’s a problem, and opinions vary on whether traffic enforcement in America needs a massive overhaul. On one end, some academics and activists want to see police removed from routine traffic stops for civil infractions, by either shifting these duties to unarmed civil servants or automating aspects of enforcement.
That’s “nothing short of lunacy” to Robert Stevenson, executive director of the Michigan Association of Chiefs of Police.
“Way too many officers are attacked and injured at traffic stops because the people they’ve stopped, unbeknownst to them, have been involved in criminal activity or are wanted for very serious violations,” he said.
Some departments are evaluating their practices in the wake of viral videos of shooting deaths that started with a stop for a minor infraction.
Last July, Lansing Police Chief Daryl Green instructed his officers to no longer stop drivers solely for defective equipment violations. That means that pulling someone over for an infraction such as a cracked windshield, a loud exhaust system, a burned-out license plate lamp, broken taillight or a dangling air freshener is off the table with the narrow exception of when the violation is deemed a threat to the driver’s or the community’s safety.
Green said he wants his officers to prioritize more pressing concerns to public safety, like speeding, reckless driving and driving under the influence. The recent shooting of Wright further emphasized for Green that police need “better guidelines” because traffic stops are dangerous, both for citizens and officers. Stops for trivial infractions like an air freshener hanging from the rear-view mirror sow distrust between police and communities, he said.
“When you talk equipment violation stops, it further shows the disproportionate impact it has on particular people of lower socioeconomic backgrounds, and unfortunately, that goes into the disproportionate representation by people of color,” he said.
Green said his officers don’t necessarily like that he’s taken away some of their discretion. But he’s pushing to solidify the guidelines as a formal policy, saying, “this is something the community wants.” He said it’s drawn interest from several area police departments.
It’s too soon to tell what, if any, effect the change has had. The past year was an anomaly. Traffic stops are down 46.5% from the previous year because of COVID-19, Green said. He expects next year’s data to offer a better picture.
Police in Fayetteville, North Carolina., implemented a similar policy in 2013. In the following years, stops for non-moving violations plummeted, the Burlington Times-News reported. Meanwhile, stops for speeding and other moving violations increased. The number of Black drivers searched from 2013 to 2016 fell by almost 50% compared with the previous four years, the newspaper reported.
In September, Michigan State Police announced a website with the department’s traffic stop data broken down by race. In 2017, Black drivers made up 17.4% of stops by troopers. That percentage rose to 21.6% in 2020. Michigan’s Black population is 14.1%.
MSP’s website states it would be “premature” to draw conclusions from the data. The department is working with researchers at MSU’s School of Criminal Justice on an analysis and to establish benchmarks to identify where disparities may exist. MSP spokeswoman Shanon Banner said more information is expected this fall.
A long-standing concern in conversations about policing and disparities are pretext stops, when an officer observes a minor traffic offense or an equipment violation and uses the stop to investigate for evidence of a more serious crime. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that such stops are constitutional.
In Washtenaw County, the prosecutor’s office says pretext stops are “inextricably intertwined with racial profiling.” The office announced in January that it will not authorize charges for contraband offenses, such as possession of drugs or weapons, that arise from pretext stops. The directive states that pretext stops are “humiliating, traumatizing, and can lead to broad distrust of law enforcement in communities of color.”
The prosecutor’s policy allows for exceptions. It doesn’t apply when an officer conducts a legal stop to investigate a crime such as a homicide, sexual assault or driving under the influence. Nor does the policy apply when an officer has independent probable cause to search the vehicle and when there are drugs or other contraband in plain sight.
James Allen estimates that police in the suburbs of Detroit have pulled him over more than 10 times in the last decade. He can rattle off instances of police repeatedly following him as he drove home from work. In the worst cases, he said officers have beaten him in front of his children as the authorities alleged that he was resisting.
But stops that end with a warning or a ticket for a minor violation also aggravate Allen. The last stop happened in March, when he said an officer followed him for about two miles before stopping him for an air freshener hanging from his rear-view mirror and a license plate lamp that appeared to be broken. The lamp was actually just obscured by mud, he said.
“Run the plate but if the plate is right, keep it moving. That’s a waste of taxpayers’ money, stopping me for a license plate light,” said Allen, 64, who lives in Detroit.
Stevenson, the executive director of the police chiefs association, pushed back on the idea of ending enforcement of equipment violations, saying it’s unfair for residents to be bothered by the sounds of tires squealing and loud exhausts in the middle of the night. He said he thinks that to say that officers are going to “ignore” laws sends the wrong message to the community.
“The simplest solution is to have your exhaust working and have your lights working,” he said.
Volunteers have gotten creative to help with that. The Washtenaw County-based group Pull Over Prevention hosts free clinics to repair lights and fix other minor car issues so that drivers can avoid interactions with police.
“We’re obviously aimed at helping people of color who are getting victimized by the police as seen in the national news, but we are also helping people who just genuinely can’t afford to get their car fixed, even something as simple as a car light bulb,” said Shane Mall, a volunteer.
