“Driving While Black” – Racial Profiling Crisis Erupts
ACLU of Maryland on this day sued the Maryland State Police for race discrimination in traffic stops on Interstate 95. The case brought the “driving while black” (DWB) controversy to national prominence.
DWB is defined as the police stopping drivers because of the color of their skin and not because of any violation of traffic laws or suspicion of other criminal activity.
The campaign against DWB led to a number of states passing laws that required law enforcement agencies to collect data on traffic stops, including demographic data on the drivers of cars stopped. Many police departments, meanwhile, adopted formal policies forbidding the use of race in any police action (arrests, etc.) and also improved training on traffic enforcement and the use of race in enforcement activities.
The national crisis prompted the first meaningful research on police traffic enforcement practices. The Fair and Impartial Policing Project FAIP), meanwhile, conducts training for law enforcement agencies on the issue of “unconscious bias” (see Fair and Impartial Policing, below).
In one of the best studies of police traffic enforcement, Charles Epp and his colleagues (see Pulled Over, below) found that there are really to kinds of stops. “Traffic enforcement” stops involve either illegal driving behavior (e.g., drunk driving, running a red light), while “suspicion” stops involve a police officer’s suspicion about the driver or passenger(s) in the care. Epp and colleagues found that African Americans are much more likely to be subject to “suspicion” stops and that they are deeply resented because they raise questions about the character or even the citizenship of the driver and passenger(s).
Read about racial profiling: David Harris, Profiles in Injustice: Why Racial Profiling Cannot Work (2002)
Learn more: ACLU, Driving While Black (1999)
Read the outstanding study of racial profiling: Charles Epp, et al, Pulled Over: How Police Stops Define Race and Citizenship (2014)
Read the Justice Department’s Police-Public Contact Survey: http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/cpp08.pdf
Learn about unconscious bias in law enforcement: http://fairandimpartialpolicing.com/