Too Much "Routine", not Enough 4th Amendment "Laws in and of themselves will not protect us; laws are words written on paper; laws protect no one. Laws are no stronger than those who enforce them."[MORE]

Traffic Codes as a Major Tool of White Supremacy. For white folks, the bare essentials of a "routine traffic stop" consist of causing the vehicle to stop, explaining to the driver the reason for the stop, questioning solely based on the stop, verifying the credentials of the driver and the vehicle, and then issuing a citation or a warning. 10 minutes later, have a nice day buddy. 

For many Black folks the bare essentials of a traffic stop consist of a records check via radio or computer regarding the criminal & traffic history of those stopped and any outstanding arrest warrants for those individuals; records check of the vehicle registration,  interrogation of those stopped directly on the subject of drugs or weapons, interrogation about the nature and purpose of their travels; seeking (and often obtaining) consent to conduct a full search of the stopped vehicle and the driver/passengers; using a drug-sniffing dog to detect the presence of any drugs in the stopped vehicle and/or verbal abuse, provocation and/or physical beat down. Contemptuous, shitty government service from public servants. Thanks master, its all about keeping cops safe and Blacks serving the government. [MORE]

From [NPR] A new poll out this week from NPR finds that 60 percent of black Americans say they or a family member have been stopped or treated unfairly by police because they are black. In addition, 45 percent say they or a family member have been treated unfairly by the courts because they are black. The poll is a collaboration between NPR, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

The poll reveals the consequences of these stops for black Americans personally and across society — 31 percent of poll respondents say that fear of discrimination has led them to avoid calling the police when in need. And 61 percent say that where they live, police are more likely to use unnecessary force on a person who is black than on a white person in the same situation.

Previous polls have asked similar questions, but ours is unique in that it's the first to ask about lifetime experiences with policing. It's part of NPR's ongoing series "You, Me and Them: Experiencing Discrimination in America."

A Pew Research poll in 2016 asked whether people had been unfairly stopped by police because of race or ethnicity in the previous 12 months and found that 18 percent of black people said yes. A 2015 CBS News/New York Times poll asked whether this had ever happened and found 41 percent of black people said yes.

Our poll differs from Pew in that we asked not only about a much longer period but also whether people had been unfairly stopped or treated because of their race or ethnicity. We differ from CBS in that we included the word "unfairly." We also differ from both the Pew and CBS polls because we asked whether a person or a family member had had this experience, which gives us a better sense of the presence of these experiences in respondents' life and surroundings.

The black American data from our poll, released Tuesday, were compiled from 802 black Americans as part of a large national representative probability survey of 3,453 adults from Jan. 26 to April 9. The margin of error for the full black American sample is plus or minus 4.1 percentage points. [MORE]