Monday night, I was finishing up a shopping run when I walked out into the middle of what smelled like a drug arrest. Not a big surprise, we do live in a college town. What made me nervous was that the suspect was black, and both arresting officers were white.
I asked my roommate to take the groceries to the car and unload, and I stood across the road to watch. At one point, one of the officers looked up and noticed me. I told him I was just keeping an eye on the situation and he said they had it under control. That wasn’t exactly my concern, but I just nodded and waited. Both cruisers eventually left, suspect presumably in tow.
It made me think of something that happened just a bit after the new year. I was up here to visit my roommates, and had just dropped one of them off at their dorm. I was driving home when I got pulled over by a police cruiser. He asked for my license, asked if I’ve been drinking. I’ll admit, I do have a tendency to hug the white line. However, he let me off with a warning.
Right before spring break last year, my little sister got pulled over for speeding. She fully admits she was 15 mph over the speed limit. The officer let her off with a warning.
Now here’s the question: would we have been let off that easily if we hadn’t been well-off looking white kids? If you immediately answer yes, you have some assumptions about how the world works. If you don’t, then you should be able to question why that is. In a fair world, the answer would be yes. But we don’t live in a fairytale.
While my boyfriend is white, his sister and her kids are visibly mixed. I messaged him the night I was pulled over in January, and he could immediately recount stories about his sister being pulled over and thoroughly questioned. One of my cousins, who leans much further right than I, even noticed this type of double standard when he was pulled over with a black girlfriend. When that particular cousin notices an issue, things are bad.
My dad was once pulled over for majorly speeding in Texas. Yet, the stop remained cordial. Casey Miller of Harrisburg can’t take her kids grocery shopping without getting grief.
According to data from North Carolina, black people were 60-70% more likely to be in a traffic stop, despite being less likely to own or drive a car. I’m sure most of us remember the slew of hashtags in recent years for those unjustly killed. We remember “I can’t breathe.” There’s the “suicide” of Sandra Bland, which is about as believable as that of Jeffrey Epstein. The system clearly needs a massive overhaul. What are we going to do about it?
Additional Links:
Outside of Arkansas:
- Racial Disparities in Traffic Stop Outcomes — Baumgartner, Christiani, Epp, Roach and Shoub
- Traffic Stop Data Analysis and Findings, 2015-16 — State of Connecticut
- Exploring Racial Disproportionality in Traffic Stops Conducted by the Durham Police Department — Taniguchi, Hendrix, Aagaard, Strom, Levin-Rector and Zimmer
- Traffic Stop Statistics — North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation
- Analysis of Traffic Stop and Search Data – Greenboro Police Department
What Arkansans should know:
- Traffic stop near Warren leads to shooting death — Arkansas Times
- Traffic stop quota concerns in North Little Rock — Fox 16
- What to do if you’re stopped by police, immigration agents or the FBI — ACLU Arkansas
- Legal advice on Traffic stops in Arkansas — Avvo lawyer directory
- What are your rights when you’re pulled over by a police officer? — ABC 7
- What Arkansans Need to Know When Dealing with the Police — Seeds of Liberation
Categories: Opinion
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