It deserves some attention, but it is young turks, so I don’t trust them to do that but his dept who has access to the reasons for the stops and tickets.
What I found interesting about that story was the part about blacks being stopped less
At night. I don’t have too much to say about that other than there are ways to tell the race of a driver on a traffic stop. Maybe the officer knows the car and driver to be suspended? Maybe a purple caddy with gold rims could be vehicular profiling (more on that in a min). Maybe the officer is watching the car? My point is that no officer I ever worked with would simply say “see black driver, stop same.” I think it has more to do with cops working high crime/more black areas being more aggressive with proactive policing and that is a by-product of that.
As for the vehicular profiling. Give me your opinion. We responded to a burglary in progress. A woman came downstairs in an affluent area and observed a couple of black males in her apartment. As we arrived, we observed the same guys running between houses and gave chase but lost him. So I began to check vehicles in the neighborhood and after ruling out the nicer ones and ones that came back to that neighborhood , I found a beat-up Lexus with dark tinted windows with the seat all the way back. Blunt innards and empty baggies everywhere. So I ran the plates and got a name. We pulled up his pic and did a line up to show her and she picked out the registered owner of the vehicle. We got a conviction and solved other burglaries in the area.
Now, my question for you is do you think that was wrong, or possibly good police work?
Young Turks do some great work and they do some horrible hatchet jobs that appeal to their base. No different than any online leaning op-ed news source. Same coin different side.
I only sent that link because it contained the stop in question. I wasn't calling for TYT to be the judge on this. I was getting at a more formal investigation internally or through oversight from another legal structure.
It would be great if we could trust LEAs to be their own watchdogs however its current state it clearly shows they need watchdog groups and public outrage to keep them honest.
Every area is not "a black neighborhood " every cop accused of this is not strictly working in "black areas." So I'm sure that can be an answer for some of it, but its not the answer for all of it.
Also, just because your fellow officers don't introduce themselves as "Hi, I'm Bob the racist " doesn't mean some of them aren't. They also aren't really going to tell a self proclaimed good cop, " hey I shakedown drug dealers. I rape prostitutes. I also steal time." That seems unrealistic. I'll even argue many people who I consider racist have an unconscious bias & may not realize it or are in denial about it. Keep in mind based off perspective and life experience our definitions of "racial & racism" are probably vastly different.
For your example: If there was a confirmed burglary in progress and the witness was credible and identified Black males as the suspects. I don't think there is a racial component to that.
Then, if you noticed an out of place vehicle in the vicinity with drug paraphernalia in it & ran the tags to get the I.D. again no racial component in that. The tags were out of the area, there was drug paraphernalia in the car, owner matched the description of the witness. Just happened to be Black.
Thats different than lets pull over or run the plates 4 the purple Caddy with Gold wheels just because.
Most Blacks I know with nice car & nice things obtained them through their jobs or legal business. Myself included. I have been collecting muscle cars & sports cars since before I could drive. So I got unjustly profiled a lot.
