Being safe
This week, as we witness what the International Court of Justice describes as “the catastrophic humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip” and it issues a preliminary order requiring Israel “to take actions to ensure its soldiers and citizens adhere to the Genocide Convention,” the issues we face at home can feel less urgent.
Yet, the connections undergirding a global order based on violence and the use of force are expressed in direct and indirect ways in our daily lives.
These connections are especially clear when we look at the most sanctioned form of daily violence, the use of police powers to enforce laws and control people. This past week a report about the Michigan State Police and racial disparities reflects just how much the acceptance of militarized force in the name of creating security has distorted our thinking.
The report’s genesis was part of a settlement of a lawsuit brought by the ACLU on behalf of an African American couple who were stopped by Sate Police, allegedly for running a red light on 8 Mile Road. The couple was detained for nearly two hours and subjected to a search for drugs. No drugs were found. No ticket was issued. The driver of the car, Mr. Camara Sankofa said:
“Being a Black man in America, I know that any encounter with police can cost you your life, which is why I obey all traffic laws and have not had a ticket in the last 28 years I have been driving. This traffic stop was humiliating, and has left a lasting impact on me, including the fear I feel every time I get behind the wheel. I want to help stop this from happening to anyone else.”
The lawsuit brought to light important research documenting racial disparities in traffic stops. The focus of the current report was to ask why these racial disparities happen.
The finding most reported in the mainstream media was that police officers as individuals do not intentionally discriminate against African Americans. Rather, the number of stops reflects policies that encourage informal quotas, lack of training on the use of discretion, and poor supervision. The report provides a number of recommendations to alter these policies.
The report is a well-documented answer to the wrong question. Instead of trying to manage police behavior at traffic stops, we need to ask if police should have the power to make them at all. Do traffic stops for low level violations make us safer?
The answer to that question seems clear. No. They do not. A recent study found:
The deeply entrenched racial disparities in traffic enforcement and the continued killing of Black drivers show that regardless of intentions, the harms of traffic stops far outweigh any potential public safety benefits. Traffic stops result in neither increased trust in the police nor increased perceptions of safety among community members, and they often have the opposite effect. In some cases, traffic stops can lead to decreases in motor vehicle crashes and fatalities. But they should not lead to life-threatening interactions.
Further a recent study affirmed:
The vast majority of traffic stops and searches do not result in an arrest, the highly racialized nature of these interactions erodes community trust in the police. Further, police stops of innocent people exact a psychological toll, particularly for Black Americans, who continue to experience collective trauma from police violence. Black people are murdered by police at more than twice the rate of white people, despite comprising 13 percent of the US population.
Across the country people are organizing to restrict police from stopping people for minor infractions. And they are requiring police to get written permission before conducting searches of vehicles. In Fayetteville North Carolina, where these policies have been in effect for nearly two decades, one report found that not only did racial disparities in traffic stops fall, but because police were able to concentrate on behaviors that actually endangered safety, the number of crashes and traffic deaths also dropped. In addition, the overall crime rate for non-traffic crimes fell or remained static, countering the argument that enforcing a dragnet of low-level traffic builds public safety. And the number of searches fell precipitously with the requirement of written consent.
Recently the city of Philadelphia instituted similar policies. Stops involving black men went down 54%
When we ask what really makes us safe, we open our thinking and our hearts to very different ideas about what is possible.