Congressional Black Caucus Urges Feds to End Traffic Stops for 'Driving While Black'

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Dozens of members of the Congressional Black Caucus signed and delivered a letter to Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg Thursday imploring the him to investigate federal funds going to racially biased traffic stops.

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“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 were led by Democratic Reps. Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts and Hank Johnson of Georgia. They pointed out the sharp contrast between how Black drivers are treated versus white. From the letter:

Generations of Black people have been unjustly subjected to biased traffic enforcement and police interaction. While driving laws have been enacted at every level of government to safeguard the public, officers selectively enforce these laws to the detriment of Black drivers. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics in the United States Department of Justice, more than 20 million people are pulled over for traffic violations every year and Black motorists are overrepresented compared to their white counterparts.1 This disparity is even more alarming when taking into account that Black people are less likely to have access to a vehicle.2 There is no plausible explanation to this inequitable enforcement except racial discrimination.

For example, the use of racial profiling causes Black drivers to be intentionally stopped for minor traffic violations as pretexts for police to question them and search their vehicles in hopes of discovering contraband. Studies have found that pretextual stops do not routinely lead to the discovery of contraband or enhance public safety.3 Instead, racist traffic enforcement stigmatizes Black people and undermines DOT’s focus on transit equity. Driving while Black may not be a real crime codified in law, but it is treated as one throughout the country.

The letter asks the Department of Transportation to gather data and impose more rigorous oversight of individual police departments’ tactics. They also call for “…eliminating financial barriers to vehicle registration and upgrading traffic lights can reduce enforcement demands.” A lack of data certainly hurts lawmakers and experts from addressing the problem. Where there are numbers, they don’t lie: Black people feel the brunt of American traffic enforcement. In California, for instance, the state’s Racial and Identity Profiling Advisory Board said police were two times more likely to search Black citizens than White. Several U.S. cities, such as Memphis and San Francisco, have also taken steps to limit pretext stops by police.

The letter is in response to several high-profile incidents of Black people being harassed or killed by law enforcement when stopped for trivial traffic issues that don’t directly affect public safety. Police beat, tasered, and pepper sprayed Tyre Nichols in January of this year during a traffic stop. By the time Nichols got to the hospital, according to his family, he was dead.