Another datapoint (Apologies for the wall of text)
I've also had a few DWBs (Driving While Black, which is ironic cause my friends tell me I drive like an old grandma, adhere to the speed limit etc). Keep in mind that the only ticket I’ve ever gotten was for 42 MPH in a 35 MPH Zone, and the cop lied, I was doing 37 MPH. Also, the cop kept me there an hour while he run my license and repeatedly asked me questions from his car over a bullhorn (‘what do you do’ etc) to humiliate me.
DWB in Boston Metro area was a frequent occurence for me until a blockbuster Boston Globe/Northeastern University study in 2003 showed how prevalent it was and forcing change. The funny thing, Boston Globe profiled one cop over 2 months and showed how he tended to give white drivers warnings but gave black drivers tickets for lesser infractions, and his excuse was essentially that ‘blacks gave him attitude’.
http://www.boston.com/globe/metro/packages/tickets/010603.sh...
An officer's pattern in two months might not reflect a career's work. But one patrolman's decisions shed some light on how gaps in ticketing can emerge.
At his speed trap on VFW Parkway in West Roxbury on Monday, April 2, 2001, Officer William G. Knecht wasn't guessing the speeds of cars headed toward him. He had the newest instrument for clocking motorists, a LIDAR gun. But his day was filled with moments of leniency and of toughness.
At 9:30 a.m., Knecht wrote a $115 ticket to a 35-year-old black woman from Boston, for going 14 m.p.h. over in a 35 zone. Five minutes later, the officer clocked at the same speed an 80-year-old white man from Medfield, and gave him a written warning.
The next day, Tuesday, back on the VFW Parkway, Knecht warned a 33-year-old white woman from Boston at 9:25 a.m., after he clocked her driving 16 m.p.h. over in a 35 m.p.h. zone.
Exactly 25 minutes later, Knecht ticketed a 28-year-old black man, also from Boston, though he was driving slower -- 15 m.p.h. over in the 35 m.p.h. zone.
In the two months studied, Knecht wrote 105 citations. He ticketed 84 percent of the minority speeders, and 72 percent of the whites. He ticketed men and women equally. And the older the driver, the more leniency Knecht showed, especially if the older driver was white.
...
"There are always mitigating circumstances in a stop," Knecht said in an interview. "Anything could be said or could happen. Attitudes, people talking back to you. The circumstances change with each individual driver. But for most cops I know, race has nothing to do with it.”
So in order to buy Officer Knecht assumptions we have to assume that every black person he stopped gave him attitude (which any black person with any sense of self-preservation would not be likely to do).
We also had a disconcerting incident in Brookline MA (2004). My wife (fiancee at the time), who is white lived there, and we were once walking hand in hand. A cop car drove by, and then pulled a sharp tire screeching U-turn and came right up to us, almost onto the sidewalk. The white cop looks at my wife and asks ‘Are you OK?’. She says yes, and the cop fixes me with a glare that could have killed, and then roared off in disgust. We were gob-smacked, but not really surprised.
Not all my cop interactions have been bad (I was rear ended on Wellington Circle in Everett and the MA State Trooper who responded and sorted out everything was incredibly efficient and polite), but that has been the exception. When dealing with cops, I know that anything I do/say (or even the initial stop) is colored by race. What would be simple assertiveness from someone white of my same socioeconomic status would be seen as being uncooperative/suspicious coming from me. As a black person, I cannot operate under the mistaken assumption that the cops are actually there for my safety/benefit.