Dozens of members of the Congressional Black Caucus signed and delivered a letter to Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg Thursday imploring the him to analyze federal funds going to racially biased site visitors stops.
“Driving while Black may not be a real crime codified in law, but it is treated as one throughout the country,” the letter reads. The group of lawmakers had been led by Democratic Reps. Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts and Hank Johnson of Georgia. They identified the sharp distinction between how Black drivers are handled versus white. From the letter:
Generations of Black individuals have been unjustly subjected to biased site visitors enforcement and police interplay. While driving legal guidelines have been enacted at each degree of presidency to safeguard the general public, officers selectively implement these legal guidelines to the detriment of Black drivers. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics within the United States Department of Justice, greater than 20 million persons are pulled over for site visitors violations yearly and Black motorists are overrepresented in comparison with their white counterparts.1 This disparity is much more alarming when considering that Black persons are much less more likely to have entry to a automobile.2 There isn’t any believable rationalization to this inequitable enforcement besides racial discrimination.
For instance, the usage of racial profiling causes Black drivers to be deliberately stopped for minor site visitors violations as pretexts for police to query them and search their autos in hopes of discovering contraband. Studies have discovered that pretextual stops don’t routinely result in the invention of contraband or improve public security.3 Instead, racist site visitors enforcement stigmatizes Black individuals and undermines DOT’s give attention to transit fairness. Driving whereas Black is probably not an actual crime codified in legislation, however it’s handled as one all through the nation.
The letter asks the Department of Transportation to assemble knowledge and impose extra rigorous oversight of particular person police departments’ techniques. They additionally name for “…eliminating financial barriers to vehicle registration and upgrading traffic lights can reduce enforcement demands.” An absence of knowledge definitely hurts lawmakers and specialists from addressing the issue. Where there are numbers, they don’t lie: Black individuals really feel the brunt of American site visitors enforcement. In California, as an illustration, the state’s Racial and Identity Profiling Advisory Board stated police had been two occasions extra more likely to search Black residents than White. Several U.S. cities, akin to Memphis and San Francisco, have additionally taken steps to restrict pretext stops by police.
The letter is in response to a number of high-profile incidents of Black individuals being harassed or killed by legislation enforcement when stopped for trivial site visitors points that don’t instantly have an effect on public security. Police beat, tasered, and pepper sprayed Tyre Nichols in January of this yr throughout a site visitors cease. By the time Nichols acquired to the hospital, based on his household, he was useless.
Source: jalopnik.com