12/18/2023
These racial disparities in local policing are just as unacceptable in 2023 as they were in 2010!! The statistics have worsened. Instead of challenging this, most local leaders are either complicitly silent or have completely sold out (.... some would rather SWITCH than FIGHT! iykyk). If you live in Fayetteville this article is a MUST READ. The only way this will be corrected is if community members demand equal justice and hold our elected officials accountable until that is a reality! (see City Council public forum sign up in the comments. Next Regular meeting is on January 8th at 7pm!)
Article Excerpts:......"The controversy eventually led in 2012 to a brief moratorium on verbal consent searches, a temporary policy switch to written consent searches and the resignations of City Manager Dale Iman and Fayetteville Police Chief Tom Bergamine. In February 2021, the Observer [revisited the issue](.https://rb.gy/6n7ckh), finding that Black drivers were still being stopped and searched at disproportionate rates in Fayetteville....“Yes, you do have 100% probable cause, but how convenient that three times, four times out of the time that you could, you’re searching Black drivers,” Benavente said. “It’s not an excuse to say, ‘I had probable cause,’ because the Supreme Court said that if you’ve got an air freshener hanging from your rearview mirror, that’s probable cause to stop you because that’s obstructing your view That level of discretion that the police have is so large, and it’s just wild that we’re applying that discretion so unevenly.”......."Frank Baumgartner, a professor of political science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and author of the 2018 book “[Suspect Citizens: What 20 Million Traffic Stops Tell Us About Policing and Race](https://rb.gy/2m72id),” raised a brow upon hearing of the Fayetteville Police Department's traffic stop data. “Wow,” Baumgartner said. Traffic stops provide police officers with a great deal of authority, Baumgartner said.Baumgartner noted that it isn’t difficult to violate something in the traffic code. “When they invented the traffic code back in the 1930s, they made almost every possible thing be illegal. Your car is a crime zone, basically,” he said. “The traffic code provides the opportunity for the police officer to pull over whomever they want. I think that’s just a fact of life that most people don’t understand because the police use their discretion and they don’t pull over people all the time.”
Baumgartner said that not everyone benefits under that system of discretion.“I haven’t been pulled over in ... going on 30 years now, because I don’t fit that stereotype profile, being an older white man,” he said. “The police have the authority to pull me over if they want to. They just don’t want to because they don’t find me to be an interesting person to ask questions to because I don’t fit the profile.” “The criminal profile the police use is a young male of color in a poor neighborhood,” Baumgartner said. And because those with less income often don’t have the money to keep up with car registration and repairs, they are easier to target in traffic stops initiated for non-moving violations, such as a broken taillight or expired registration, he said. “When we looked at the search rates when the stop itself had been a moving violation, the search rates were not as different for Blacks and whites,” Baumgartner said. “But when the stop was initiated because of an equipment violation or an expired tag or something like that, it was much more likely to have a racially disparate search rate."
Fayetteville police are still searching Black male drivers at disproportionate rates, traffic stop data shows.
