The Daily - A Push for Traffic Stop Reform

Episode Date: April 25, 2022

A Times investigation last year found that minor traffic stops in the United States were far more deadly than widely thought — in the previous five years, 400 unarmed motorists who were not under pursuit for any violent crime were killed by the police during such checks.We look at the different efforts across the country to rethink the stops and at the pushback from opponents who say that restrictions on the practice could keep more guns and criminals on the streets.Guest: David D. Kirkpatrick, an investigative reporter for The New York Times.Want more from The Daily? For one big idea on the news each week from our team, subscribe to our newsletter. Background reading: A recent example of a fatal end to a traffic stop was the death in Grand Rapids, Mich., of Patrick Lyoya, an unarmed 26-year-old Black man who was pulled over for a mismatched license plate.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday. 

From The New York Times, I'm Sabrina Tavernisi. This is The Daily. Last year, a Times investigation found that minor traffic stops are far more lethal than anyone thought. far more lethal than anyone thought. Today, my colleague, David Kirkpatrick, on the efforts to cut back on such stops and how a rise in violent crime threatens those reforms. It's Monday, April 25th. David, last time we talked, you and our colleagues had just released this sweeping investigation into traffic stops. Remind us what you guys found.

So criminologists have known for a while that traffic stops, especially for minor violations, disproportionately affect black people and people of color. Those people are much more likely to get pulled over for trivial reasons. So what my colleagues Steve Eder and Kim Barker and I added to that in our reporting last year was a sense of the death toll. We found that over the previous five years, a total of more than 400 unarmed motorists who were not under pursuit for any violent crime ended up killed by a police officer who had pulled them over. Right. And I remember you really dug into why those incidents so frequently go wrong. Well, at the core of it is the widespread belief among police that pulling over cars is exceptionally dangerous to the police.

Now, that's not really true. In fact, if you look at the total number of cars that police pull over, there really is not a greater risk at any given stop to the police officer than there is in a lot of other activities that police engage in. And yet, nonetheless, police are trained to go into these encounters ready to defend their lives, that their lives are on the line, and that can lead to a kind of extra aggression. And since our investigation, we've seen this pattern continue, a long stream of seemingly innocuous traffic stops ending in the death of a motorist. We want to get right to our top story tonight. The most recent example is in Grand Rapids, Michigan, of Patrick Leoya.

Pulled over, police say, because his license plate did not match the car. Here is a 26-year-old black man who was pulled over for what the officer said were mismatched license plates. Under public pressure, police have since released four videos of the incident. The driver tried to flee. The officer pursued him. There was a brief scuffle, struggle for the officer's taser. And seconds later, the officer shot him in the back of the head. Oh. So that Grand Rapids, Michigan case sounds like exactly what you guys were investigating. A really stark example of it. Yeah, it really is. We saw example after example that unfolded in a very similar way.

The motorist, for whatever reason, tries to flee. The officer takes that flight as a sign of aggression. The officer tries to pursue. And somehow, in a matter of seconds, it's escalated to the killing of the driver. And, you know, in this case, it's kicked off protests again in Grand Rapids, and it's really kind of restarted a national conversation about these low-level traffic stops and their disproportionate impact on people of color. So tell me what's changed since your investigation was published. Well, somewhat

surprisingly to me, we're seeing a really broad rethinking of the way police do traffic stops in lots of places around the country. I mean, just to put it in perspective, the current approach to traffic stops has been around since the early 1980s. There were three things at that time that led people to stop more cars. One was a rise in crime rates. The second was a responding shift on the part of police towards more proactive policing. That is, they weren't gonna just sit around and wait for the 911 call.

They were gonna try to go out and catch the criminals proactively, and that included by pulling over cars. go out and catch the criminals proactively, and that included by pulling over cars. And the third thing is the advent of in-car computer systems that the police could use to try to run down plates and see whether they had a cause or even a pretext to pull over a car they might see on the road.

And all three of these things combined to make what are now known as pretextual stops a real cornerstone of policing. That is where the officer pulls over a car for a really minor reasons, like a broken taillight. But what they're really after is just to look around the car and see if they can see drugs or an expired warrant or guns or some evidence of a crime. And what's happening now is that a variety of different jurisdictions in different ways are trying to rethink their approach to these kinds of traffic stops. And our investigation into the death toll from these stops in some places has even played a part in that rethinking.

When the Pittsburgh City Council passed a law banning low-level traffic stops, for example, the text of the legislation quoted our reporting. So who's behind these moves in cities like Pittsburgh? Well, it's different people in different places around the country. In some places, it's the city councils. Philadelphia in March became the first big city where a ban on low-level traffic stops went into effect. traffic stops went into effect. The city council basically took a list of several low-level citations and said police can no longer stop you for these things. Brooklyn Center, Minnesota is working on a similar measure. That's where Dante Wright, a young black man, was killed a year ago

by an officer who grabbed her gun instead of her taser. In other places, we're seeing police commissions or police chiefs acting on their own. And other places around the country, it's the district attorneys who are taking action. They're saying they want to reduce the incentives for these kinds of traffic stops. So they're no longer going to bring charges based on contraband, drugs or guns that are collected at pre-tech stops. The first DA to do that was in San Francisco. Most recently, the DA in Burlington, Vermont did something similar. And last fall, the district attorney in Ramsey County, Minnesota,

did the same thing. People might remember that was where Philando Castile was killed a few years ago. He was a young black man who had politely told the officer pulling him over that he was carrying a handgun, which was licensed, and the officer nonetheless killed Mr. Castile when he reached for his identification. David, has this reform faced any pushback? Yeah, there is vigorous pushback, most recently in Los Angeles. Los Angeles is the biggest city yet to take some action to try to restrict or reduce low-level traffic stops. And what they've done there is actually fairly nuanced. The police commission and the chief have asked officers to record themselves on their body camera whenever they're pulling over a driver,

explaining the real reason they're pulling over that driver. So that is, if an officer is pulling over a car with a broken taillight, the officer needs to make a recording explaining to the driver, look, it's not just your broken taillight. I also think your car resembles one that was recently associated with a serious crime or what have you. And yet, even that relatively minor restriction on the ability of police to pull over cars has drawn quite a vigorous counterattack from the police union and its supporters. What are they saying? Well, violent crime is everywhere in L.A.

Yet Police Commissioner Briggs voted to curtail LAPD's ability to keep guns off our streets. The police union has put up online advertisements and its allies around Los Angeles are taking the position that anything that discourages police from pulling over cars to look inside is going to have the result of keeping more guns and more criminals on the streets. Legal traffic and pedestrian stops take thousands of guns from criminals. But Briggs claims that these stops don't curtail violent crime. It's dishonest to say removing thousands of guns from L.A. doesn't curtail violence.

This election, choose city leaders who work to keep guns off our streets. What they're saying is that at a time when homicide rates are rising in Los Angeles and other cities, the last thing you want to do is put more hurdles in front of the police and make a police officer think twice before he pulls over a car to check inside for drugs or guns or warrants. David, can you help me understand the dynamic here? I mean, this is the police union going against rules that were set by the police chief, right? How do I understand that? Well, police unions represent their rank and file members who may see things differently than the management, their chiefs. And that goes on in

districts around the country. So you often see police unions advocating for as much latitude as possible for the individual officers. They'd like to see as few rules restricting the officers as possible. And when officers get in trouble, the unions are there to defend them. Got it. So worker versus management. Precisely. The opponents of these reforms are arguing that it's just not going to work, are arguing that it's just not going to work, that whatever benefits you might get, that's going to be outweighed by the loss of a really valuable crime-fighting tool, the ability to pull over cars

and take a look inside. So you have these two sides fighting. Is there any real-world data to prove which side is right? So Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Seattle, Los Angeles, those are about to provide our first big city case studies. But we do have an example in a small southern city about a decade ago. There was a police chief there who, on his own, tried to implement reforms like this with some surprising results.

We'll be right back. So, David, tell me about this one police chief who implemented reforms on his own. Well, that was Chief Harold Medlock of Fayetteville, North Carolina. Welcome to our conversation tonight on traffic stop disparities. We're excited to have this conversation with Harold Medlock, former deputy chief. There's actually a video of him telling a local nonprofit group how he set out to change the way his police officers do traffic stops. Well, Kirsten, thanks. And it's great to be with you tonight. About a decade ago, in 2013, he was new on the job. He was the new chief in Fayetteville.

And there had been a big issue in the city about what was known as driving while Black. The Black community felt that they had been subjected to discriminatory policing, especially behind the wheel. You know, we were doing a lot of work in 2013 in those first months and really had started to think about how we were going to change our approach as police officers in Fayetteville. So one morning around the time he was starting his job, Chief Medlock's wife comes home from Bible study, and she tells him a story. They began the Bible study that morning with some prayer time. And as one lady began to talk, she broke down and started crying.

Another woman, a black woman, had broke out in tears. Of course, the group stopped and said, well, what's wrong? And she said, well, I was leaving home this morning, pulled out of my driveway, drove down to the end of my block, made the left. And as soon as I did, a Fayetteville police car stopped me. This woman had been pulled over by one of the officers reporting to Chief Medlock. And the officer walked up and asked her or told her that she had been stopped because she ran the stop sign. And then he said in a very abrupt tone, where are you going?

And she said, well, I'm going to a Bible study at Village Baptist Church. The woman tried to explain that she lives in the neighborhood. She's not doing anything out of the ordinary. She's certainly not doing anything illegal. But the officer won't let up. And he said, again, very abruptly, well, there's no Bible studies going on at five o'clock in the morning on a Friday. So I need to know where you're going. And she said, well, I am going.

If you'd like to follow me there, you're certainly welcome to. And he goes, I don't need to follow you there, but don't you run that stop sign anymore. And he turned around and left. She was rattled by the encounter, and she was shaken by the time she got to Bible study. And so at 7 o'clock that morning, my wife comes in, shares that story, and points a finger in my face and says, now what are you going to do about it?

So he gets to the station and he's steamed. I do need to tell you that morning I went in and I was on a rant. He wants to know who that officer was. I wanted him in my office before the close of business that day. And I want to know everything that we know about this traffic stop. About three hours later, my internal affairs commander came back to me and said, Chief, there is no record of this traffic stop. About three hours later, my internal affairs commander came back to me and said, chief, there is no record of that traffic stop. The officer did not call it in. He did not turn his car camera on. There is no report of any radio traffic or any dispatch

traffic. That guy was out there playing the field. He was fishing, which made me even more angry. field, he was fishing, which made me even more angry. And then he goes a step further, and he decides to start telling all the officers to quit pulling over drivers for harmless offenses like expired registration or a broken taillight or some obstruction in the window. From now on, I only want you pulling over cars for dangerous moving violations that might pose a risk to other drivers. And he meets with a firestorm. There was a lot of anger and angst and frustration that I was taking a tool away from them that was going to cause crime and fable to go up. The officers in his department all predict that if they have to stop pulling cars over on minor pretexts, poke around for drugs or guns,

Fayetteville is going to see an explosion of violence and drug crime. So this sounds like the exact same argument the unions were making against the current reforms. But is there any truth to this argument? It's exactly the same argument. And in the case of Fayetteville, there really isn't any evidence to support it. The North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation collects data on traffic stops.

And what that data shows is that during the three or four years that Chief Medlock was in charge, the number of traffic stops went way up, mostly for moving violations. And at the same time, the number of searches of Black motorists went way down. And none of these things appeared to have any impact either way on homicides, violent crime, or drug crime. So the predictions of an explosion in these kinds of offenses, if the police lost this tool to try to search cars,

none of that came to pass. And it's made Chief Medlock a big name in policing. The Obama administration attorney general came to Fayetteville to see what he was up to. And since then, a lot of people around the country, city councils, police chiefs, district attorneys, have called on Chief Medlock to give them advice about how he turned things around in Fayetteville. So his experiment worked? It seemed to. But it's worth noting that since he left the job in 2016, there are some signs that things have turned back in the other direction. The African-American community in Fayetteville has begun complaining again that black motorists are being stopped disproportionately. The number of searches of black drivers and passengers has risen.

And at the same time, the number of traffic stops for dangerous offenses like speeding has actually declined. So it sounds like there are these questions about whether the policies Medlock put into place actually survived. You know, whether the people who came in after him continued them. It seems like this points to how strong the forces are that are preventing reform. So I'm wondering, what does that tell us about what's going to happen, you know, in these other jurisdictions you told us about? Well, at this point, it's all very uncertain. You know, certainly there are people around law enforcement who write

off Fayetteville as an anomaly and suggest that those practices can't be extended elsewhere with the same results. Or even more commonly, they say, look, maybe most pretextual stops don't do any good, but a few of them do a lot of good. And in this context, with murder rates rising around the country, even one extra gun on the streets is too many. So what we're seeing is that in places like San Francisco, the police union is backing a recall effort against the district attorney there, who was one of the first to try to stop pressing charges around contraband collected at pretextual stops. We're seeing the police union in Philadelphia has filed a lawsuit claiming that the local statute restricting minor traffic stops conflicts with the state law on traffic violations. In Virginia, two years ago,

the Democrats controlled the statehouse and passed one of the first statewide measures to restrict minor traffic stops. Now we're seeing Republicans try to roll that back with the help of the Republican Attorney General and a number of law enforcement associations and officials around the state. So really, it's up for grabs whether any of these reforms are going to stick around or what kind of effect they're ultimately going to have. David, stepping back for a moment here, over the past few years, as we know, there's been this big public conversation about policing in the United States, in some ways starting with the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis in 2020. And I guess I'm wondering now, two years later, what those efforts look like. What's happened to them when, as you said, violent crime and murder rates are rising. Well, we're in a real moment of collision right now between those demands for police reform

that grew out of the movement after the killing of George Floyd, on the one hand, and on the other hand, a lot of fear from the rising crime rates around the country. And that has made any effort to try to restrict the ability of police to do what they want on the job politically perilous. reforms to traffic policing around the country were actually reluctant to talk to me on the record because they were afraid that that would make them targets of the political opposition. They're already feeling the stings of accusations that by restricting the ability of officers to pull over cars, they're contributing to rising crime rates and putting people at risk. And they're afraid that if they get associated with that, it's going to be harder for them at the next election or harder for them to stay in their jobs. Wow.

So what we're seeing is, on the one hand, this sort of fear of change. And on the other hand, we're seeing some of the largest cities in the country try to fundamentally rethink their approach to traffic stops. Soon we'll have data from around the country showing whether the results of those experiments match the experience of Fayetteville. But at the same time, criminologists have had data for a while showing that pretextual stops may not be the best way for police to fight crime. And so whether these experiments, even with data, yield long-term results is going to come down to politics. And given the headwinds right now and the rising crime rates, whether they prove to be short-lived remains to be seen. David, thank you.

Thank you, Sabrina. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. On Sunday... Emmanuel Macron won a second term as president of France, beating his far-right challenger, Marine Le Pen, by a substantial margin. At the close of voting, projections showed Macron taking 58.5% of the vote, to Le Pen's 41.5%. His victory in a bitter election campaign was wider than appeared likely two weeks ago,

when the two candidates were very close in the polls. Speaking to a crowd in front of the Eiffel Tower, Macron acknowledged that, quote, anger had been expressed by those who voted for Le Pen and said that he and those around him had a duty to, quote, respond to it. And Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin III made a wartime journey to Ukraine on Sunday,

the first high-level visit of American officials since Russia invaded on February 24th. The U.S. government did not disclose any information about the trip in an apparent concern over the men's security. But Ukrainian officials confirmed the visit. President Volodymyr Zelensky was expected to urge them to provide more aid and weapons in his nation's battle against Russia. urge them to provide more aid and weapons in his nation's battle against Russia. Today's episode was produced by Muj Zaydi, Asta Chacharvedi, Alexandra Lee Young, Ricky Nowetzki, and Caitlin Roberts.

It was edited by John Ketchum and Michael Benoit, contains original music by Marian Lozano, Alicia Baitube, and Dan Powell, and was engineered by Chris Wood. Our theme music is by Jim Brumberg and Ben Landsberg of Wonderly. That's it for The Daily. I'm Sabrina Tavernisi. See you tomorrow.