recent report<\/a> issued by Missouri\u2019s attorney general Eric Schmitt revealed Black drivers across that state are 91 percent more likely than white motorists to get pulled over by police. What\u2019s more, the profiling usually takes place in the motorists\u2019 own community, according to the attorney general\u2019s report.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe Missouri report arrives on the heels of one out of Kentucky where a study found that Black motorists are searched at a rate of three-times more than whites in Louisville.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
African-Americans account for approximately 20 percent of Louisville\u2019s driving age population, but they still accounted for 33 percent of police stops and 57 percent of the nearly 9,000 searches conducted on motorists, according to the Louisville Courier Journal, which conducted the study.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Their findings were highlighted in a tweet by the Thurgood Marshall Project, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that seeks to create and sustain a sense of national urgency about the U.S. criminal justice system. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Louisville Courier Journal<\/em> said it reviewed \u201c130,999 traffic stops in Louisville from 2016 to 2018 and found that an overwhelming number of African-American drivers were profiled and pulled over by police.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe newspaper also found Black motorists were searched 12 percent of the time they were stopped, while white motorists were searched just 3.9 percent of the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cAside from the alarming and devastating findings, we have always known that racial profiling is all too prevalent throughout law enforcement and our society as a whole,\u201d NAACP President Derrick Johnson told NNPA Newswire. \u201cWhat we need is to implement proper training for law enforcement officers on how to more efficiently carry out essential policing without threatening the lives of people of color.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Racial profiling is an insidious practice and serious problem in America that can lead to deadly consequences, Johnson added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cOur faith in our criminal justice system will continuously be challenged if we are constantly targeted by discriminatory practices just by doing simple tasks – walking down the street, driving down an interstate, or going through an airport without being stopped merely because of the color of our skin. Living as a person of color should never be crime,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
American Civil Liberties Union Attorney Carl Takei told NNPA Newswire<\/em> racial disparities in the new data are similar to what courts have relied on around the country to find unconstitutional racial profiling in traffic stops.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\u201cDisparities of this kind suggest that officers are using race not only in deciding who to pull over, but who to single out for searches,\u201d Takei said. \u201cWhat\u2019s particularly damning about this data is that police were more likely to search Black people than white people yet found contraband in only 41 percent of searches of Black people compared to 72 percent of the searches of white people. In other words, the police have a pattern of stopping and searching Black people in circumstances where they would simply let white people go. This unjustly interferes with Black people trying to live their everyday lives \u2013 subjecting them to humiliating, intrusive stops and searches in circumstances where white people would not be stopped or searched.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
According to the Louisville Courier Journal<\/em>, Police Chief Steve Conrad acknowledged before the Metro Council Public Safety Committee that the department has disproportionately stopped Black drivers. The newspaper reported that Conrad reasoned that African-Americans are disproportionately represented in all aspects of the criminal justice system, including in arrests and incarceration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\u201cThis is not all surprising based on my over 35 years of practice defending drug cases after traffic stops,\u201d Randall Levine, a Kalamazoo, Michigan attorney told NNPA Newswire<\/em>. \u201cI would say that DWB \u2013 Driving While Black \u2013 is still as prevalent today as it was in 1980,\u201d Levine said, before opining what could occur to affect change. \u201cDiversity, sensitivity training and some type of real enforcement for violations might help.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two new recently published reports show that racial profiling \u2013 particularly \u201cdriving while Black\u201d \u2013 remains a crisis in America. A recent report issued by Missouri\u2019s attorney general Eric Schmitt revealed Black drivers across that state are 91 percent more likely than white motorists to get pulled over by police. What\u2019s more, the profiling usually takes place […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"off","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[1558,1559,1560],"class_list":["post-2503","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion","tag-african-american-drivers","tag-eric-schmitt","tag-thurgood-marshall-project","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2503","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2503"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2503\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2504,"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2503\/revisions\/2504"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2503"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2503"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2503"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}