Thanks to Big Country, I saw a story that came out yesterday about the Seattle Police Department no longer performing traffic stops. I met my wife after work last night- we went to the house of one of her friends. Another of her liberal teacher friends who was there was talking about this story with me. He is all in favor of it. I shot several holes in his argument.
His claim was that there is no reason for police to do a traffic stop when they can simply take down your tag number and mail a ticket to your house. Traffic stops, he says, are an escalation and almost ensures that the subjects of these stops will be nervous or scared, thus also ensuring that there will be some kind of violence that will end with the police shooting people.
I replied, “So you don’t think the cops should ever stop anyone?” He replied no, and I told him that as a paramedic who has responded to perhaps 25,000 car accidents in his career and seen hundreds of fatalities as a result, that I disagree. People would soon drive even worse than they already do. He replied that people mainly have any good driving habits because they are afraid of getting a ticket, so mailing out those tickets would have the same effect.
This was where I laughed and said, “I will just remove the license plate from my car and never get another ticket in my life. After all, if there are no traffic stops, without a tag, you have no idea where to send the ticket.”
His reply was that, of course police would stop you for no tags. I said, “Oh, so SOME traffic stops are ok?” He says yes, in cases where there are no tags, or for safety reasons. So now I move on to- what about suspected DUI? Yes. What about someone speeding? Yes, but only if someone is 25 mph or more over the speed limit. What would prevent the police from simply lowering speed limits by 25 mph? What about the kid who gets hit by a car going 44 mph in a school zone?
So then he moved the goalposts. He said that his problem was that the police use traffic stops to profile people. His daughter (white, liberal, purple hair and many piercings) lives in a ghetto, all black neighborhood and drives a red, lowrider Honda with dark tinted windows. She “gets pulled over all of the time” they question her and then “let her go because she is white.”
I said, “But profiling works.” He replied: “What?”
“Look, you are a cop. You are trying to prevent crime, or at least catch a criminal. It’s kind of your job. Which scenario will likely accomplish that- Stopping a 60 year old man driving a Lexus in a neighborhood of half million dollar homes, or a red Honda with dark tinted windows and a coffee can muffler being driven by a couple of white kids in an all black neighborhood that is notorious for drug sales and random drive by shootings?”
To his credit, he admitted that the Honda is most likely. Then I said, “Could it be that they let your daughter go because they could see that she wasn’t breaking the law, and not merely because she was white? Is it possible that they let black people go without a ticket as well?”
Then I had to let it go, because my wife was giving me “the look” for grilling her coworkers.
The fact is this: Florida did a study of traffic stops. They found out that blacks are not stopped in numbers that are out of proportion to the population of the areas where the stop is made. That is, in areas where all of the residents are black, police stop- mostly black people. Not because they are black, but because that is who is driving in that area.
15 Comments
it's just Boris · May 29, 2021 at 7:52 am
It’s pretty easy to avoid most traffic stops. Basically, don’t act in a way that draws the cop’s attention. It’s the gray-man-on-wheels approach.
1. Don’t go much faster or slower than surrounding traffic,
2. Use your signals,
3. Pay attention to what you’re doing, and
4. Don’t drive impaired.
Beyond that, keeping the tags paid up, and occasionally checking for bulbs being out etc, covers most of the rest.
Beans · May 30, 2021 at 1:10 am
And DON’T cover your windows with Limo Tint way above the legal limit, because not being able to see into a car makes the police wonder what’s going on.
Seriously. I see cars all the time with everything except the windshield effectively blacked out completely.
Divemedic · May 30, 2021 at 4:40 am
I don’t have dark tint, but this is one I have always thought to be ridiculous. This is no different than police saying you shouldn’t have curtains on the windows of your home. Just because the police want to know what is going on doesn’t mean that we should be required to accommodate them.
Jonathan · May 30, 2021 at 11:34 pm
I find it interesting that in areas where tint on most windows is banned, the cops use it heavily… just like the way they speed and drive crazy…
Bear Claw · June 1, 2021 at 8:18 am
Most people don’t check their bulbs. If I see a car with one out I try to let them know every time. Unless I think I shouldn’t
Therefore · May 29, 2021 at 8:13 am
There was a case years ago where PA or NJ state police were sued as racist. Reason being that they have out more speeding tickets to blacks then whites based on percentage of population.
Example numbers, 13% black population but 50% of the tickets were given to blacks.
State lost, had to do all sorts of things to prove they were not racist any more.
In the mean time the DoT installed traffic cameras and recorded images of cars speeding. Speeding fast enough to get tickets
In the cases were they could identify the color of the driver the percentage of black drivers speeding vs. white was exactly the same as the tickets being given prior to the police being sued.
In other words, people commit crimes, both large and small, at different rates based on their social groups. Cops, in general, give out tickets and make arrests that statistically match those group statistics, not population percentages.
Papa · May 29, 2021 at 8:19 am
Reading your conversation gave me a headache!
You, trying to use reason and logic with someone who doean’t have any.
Hopefully, liberal teacher guy will wake up and understand one day.
Thanks for giving him a nugget of reason.
joe · May 29, 2021 at 8:20 am
you can’t use logic with a libtard…it causes their brain to short circuit…they hear something from the msm and instead of actually looking at it, they repeat it as gospel…they can’t rationalize anything out on their own…all of them are mentally ill…i don’t believe cities should use traffic stops to fill their coffers but many a criminal is in prison from a traffic stop…
Don in Oregon · May 29, 2021 at 9:00 am
One of the few categories of crime in which blacks are arrested in exact proportion to their percentage of the population, is DUI.
https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2016/crime-in-the-u.s.-2016/topic-pages/tables/table-21
D · May 29, 2021 at 9:44 pm
I’ve responded to a bunch of accidents in my career too. I don’t think the force of government should ever get involved…unless you can show reckless endangerment, actual damage to property, or injury to rights. Full stop.
If someone does 10 over down my street, it doesn’t endanger me. There’s no need for a government gun to intervene.
Divemedic · May 30, 2021 at 4:47 am
So you would have no problem with someone doing 50 miles per hour in a school zone before hitting a child that was crossing the street?
Driving down the road while huffing canned air, running a stop sign, and hitting a car with three young women in it. There were no survivors.
Illegal immigrants with no insurance, no license, and no money getting in accidents, totaling your car, then walking away with no way of repairing the damage they did?
Each of these is accidents that I have responded to.
There is a line. Where do you draw it? Do you wait until AFTER irreparable damage has been done? Like it or not, there is a deterrent effect in police enforcement. Without traffic laws and enforcement, there would be far more of the cases mentioned above. There have to be limits.
D · June 1, 2021 at 10:50 am
Typical extreme. 50 in a school zone with children present would fall under reckless endangerment.
I live out in the country. If I put on a blindfold and shoot randomly in any direction, my chance of hitting someone is zero. It’s not reckless endangerment. If I did the same thing in downtown DFW, it most definitely would be.
But yes, you generally charge someone with a crime *after* it has been committed. So if some idiot does 5 over in a school zone and hits a child, charge them with negligent homicide.
If someone drives drunk today, they get a slap on the wrist, some fines, and maybe a day or two of jail time. Even if no one is injured.
It doesn’t stop drunk driving.
On the other hand, if you are drunk and kill someone with your vehicle, you should probably be jailed for decades or put to death. That would eliminate the problem rather quickly.
JebTexas · June 3, 2021 at 9:15 pm
D, it depends on where you live. My home county (Hood Co. Tx) is widely considered to be the worst place in Texas to get a DUI. With an otherwise clean record, your 1st DUI guarantees you a minimum of $3500 in fines and 6 months suspended drivers’ license. Also possible is county jail time. We enforce max penalties wherever possible. No, it doesn’t end drunk driving, but I guarantee you it reduces it greatly. Our now ex-mayor just got his 3rd DUI… 1st offense in Hood County, and he goin’ bu-bye for quite a while.
JebTexas · June 3, 2021 at 9:24 pm
I don’t know if this is still true, but in the 1990’s the FBI reported that by a large margin, the most successful police crime solving technique in the US was the traffic stop. Not fingerprint Dbase, not detectives, not ANY other accepted police procedure. Think about that for a minute: want to solve a murder? most likely resolution is… traffic stop. Want to find who stole the jewels? traffic stop. Want to find the kidnappers? traffic stop. We take the traffic stop out of their toolkit, we might as well go ahead and disband them.
D · June 4, 2021 at 10:41 am
You know what would solve murders? Just let the police into your home whenever they damn well feel like it. Let them search through your personal stuff, records, phones, computers. Complete and unfettered access. Let them listen in to phone calls too. Remove all privacy.
Good idea, right?
Screw that. Just because *some* people are bad doesn’t mean good people should be punished by government when they haven’t harmed anyone or damaged someone’s property.
Stop making excuses for government to stop and detain people under the guise of checking paperwork or BS administrivia. Because every interaction with the police can ultimately lead to your caging or death.
Tail light out? That’ll be $250, a cage, or death. Screw that. That’s not how this nation was supposed to work. That’s not freedom, that’s tyranny.
And yeah, at this point, I’d rather disband them than let them get away with such horrific behavior. I’m nearly 50, and I have *NEVER* needed the cops. I’ve been *forced* to call them because if I didn’t, I might be the one going to jail.
Attacked by a pack of dogs and shot them? Either call the police or look like I’m trying to hide things.
Crazy woman broke into my house and started peeing on all the furniture? If I threw her out of the house, it would be assault. When she started trying to attack my family, if I shot her, I would have to *prove* that we couldn’t have retreated or used any other method to avoid shooting her. So instead, this crazy person is back out there and frequently breaking into people’s homes to destroy furniture and scream about all sorts of crazy nonsense.
Dude tried to rob me with a knife while I was in a large neighboring city? If I shot him, I’d have to explain why I was carrying a firearm in a car without government permission.
Yeah, they’re pretty much unnecessary at this point.
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