Hacker News Reader

Comment by tyingq | Hacker News Reader

I can vouch for this phrase "worry about being stopped if they are driving a nice car in a modest or upscale community, a raggedy car in a mostly white one".

I live in an upper middle class neighborhood. But I drive a shitty old car, because I grew up poor, and have some fixed ideas about how much you should spend on a car.

I get pulled over at least 4 times a year. No tickets from it, ever. Had to perform and pass several sobreity tests. My wife, who drives a somewhat nicer car...never.

It so happens I'm white, but perhaps identified as "white trash" because of my old crappy cars.

All anecdotal, of course, but the cops do seem to target "car status / area status mismatch".

View on HN

I'm British and this sounds unbelievable. How "shitty" and "old" are we talking, though? I also didn't spend much on my car (2005 model, bought outright after saving for roughly two months) but it doesn't look anywhere near out of place on the road here.

We don't have the MOT in the US so much stronger outliers are still found on the road.

We've also had several government scrappage schemes in the UK so you pretty much don't see anything older than 15 years on the road. In addition our cars rust more due to weather and salt used on the road.

The first thing I noticed when I went to South Africa was the older cars on the road. Some cars that I remember from my childhood but had completely forgotten about until that point. I never realised the turnover in the UK was so high until I came back.

You have the yearly state inspection though right? At least, last I lived there you did.

We do, but outside of California, it's a cakewalk. Mostly checks for functional brake lights, turn signals, wipers, etc. And, again, outside of California, some minimal emissions tests you'll pass unless your car is seriously ailing.

Not exactly. This is highly dependent upon not only state but county as well. The type of vehicle and its age and even things like a vehicle with collectors plates can factor into emissions and testing requirements.

As an example my sister lives in a county in Colorado that doesn't do emissions testing. I bought a car - 2001 Subaru Legacy - from her several years ago and had to pass emissions as I do live in a county that requires it. It failed spectacularly. The car was not 'seriously ailing' either. The forward O2 sensor needed to be replaced and then it passed just fine.

Granted from what I hear California has pretty strict emissions requirements, but it's not necessarily a cake walk outside of California either, although sometimes it is. It's highly variable.

I'm comparing relative to UK MOT or Germany's TÜV when I say "cakewalk".

And inside of California there are no vehicle inspections except for a smog check every two years.

Cops will pull you over if your brake/head lights are out.

Some states have it, some don't.

90's era mid size cars for the most part.

As someone who travels into Britain on a regular basis and interacting with British police and customs officers:

You are delusional if you think your police force isn't racist. ESPECIALLY the customs officers, but also regular police.

I was watching some mental health videos online just last weekend, and I watched some from britain. And ... firstly minorities and the very poor are obviously overrepresented in these "groups". Second the "patients" are terrified of these mental health professionals. Utterly terrified. Thirdly, there is a clear difference in reaction patterns between white and black patients, and between muslim and non-muslim ones.

So just stop. Your police, and many other parts of the British state is explicitly attacking these people, on racist motives.

Just stop claiming otherwise. This is not incredible, this is normal.

I was actually talking about profiling based on driving an older car and in fact just getting randomly pulled over on the road in any circumstances.

A Grateful Dead sticker will significantly increase your odds of getting popped as well

Maybe. It's clear to you that you have found a correlation. Have you explored many other causes to see what their impact might be? When you are pulled over, what is commonly the reason/excuse the officers give? How do your driving habits compare to your wife? Do you drive at similar times of day? Are you both really cautious drivers?

When I was a kid I was always told that it was the people in fancy sports cars that got pulled over all the time, so by driving a modest cheap car you were taking yourself off the radar.

But that's the problem with anecdotal experience. It's hard to extrapolate trends without proper science and analysis.

EDIT: I didn't mean to target this only at the parent. The article suffers a lot of the same issues. They base a large part of their argument over a single statistic (amount of people being pulled over vs. race) and then fail to dive any deeper into the data.

Sure. I acknowledge it's anecdotal. The sobreity tests, though, when I'm stone cold sober, seemed odd. No reason for pulling me over is ever offered.

Maybe you should ask. Police aren’t allowed to stop people at random. They have to at least suspect some sort of violation.

Find some documented case where a US police officer was punished, in any way, for pulling someone over arbitrarily. There are too many loopholes. "Crossed center line", "erradic manuevers", "tint seemed dark", "appeared to see open alcohol container", "did not come to a full and complete stop", and so on.

We even have full on Stasi style checkpoints occasionally, where everyone is pulled over.

Sometimes the violation is driving 5 miles above the speed limit on a highway.

"Driving too close to the white line."

Or my personal favorite: "Driving erratically"

Sure. Selective enforcement is a huge problem. But not giving a reason at all is nuts.

Hot rods and beaters both get pulled over, expensive but slow-looking cars like Lexus minivans go under the radar. That's been the anecdote passed down to me, and it includes both of the cases we're discussing.

I owned a tan Ford Aerostar for ten years, never got pulled over once.

What make / model / year of car? Just curious.

> cops do seem to target "car status / area status mismatch"

Can you blame them?

Not only can I blame cops, but if they don’t have probable cause for these stops, the law blames them too.

but they do have probable cause. cause to execute a traffic stop is dead easy, because nobody follows the rules of the road to the letter all the time. They never pull anybody over for "being black" or "driving a shitty car in a nice neighborhood", they pull you over for driving 5km/h over the speed limit, or rolling a stop sign, or because they think your window tint might be too dark. Things they would ignore if you were driving a nicer car. It's all perfectly legal.

This is the problem with over-regulation. Of course nobody will follow the speed limit all the time, or never jaywalk or loiter or crack a beer in public or to obey any of the other silly laws that don't actually reflect societal values or public behaviour. But those laws still exist, and if a police force decides they want to abuse their power they get to start selectively enforcing them.

I've been pulled over for:

- "You were driving suspiciously" (a little below the speed limit)

- "Saw you yesterday at this time (1 AM) and wanted to see what you were up to" (driving home from work)

- "You looked too young to be out after curfew" (was 19)

I've also been stopped and searched while walking for:

- "Walking in front of closed businesses" (walking down the sidewalk at 10 PM)

- "I caught a whiff of marijuana" (I had never even seen marijuana in real life)

And several more that escape my memory at the moment. I'm pretty sure those were all illegal stops, and that's what bothers me - not that the cop would look twice and take note of me, but that he would blatantly break the law himself with no consequences.

That was 20+ years ago, and although I'm white, I used to wear a lot of black, so I probably did fit one of the cop's "troublemaker" stereotypes. I think being a young male of any race, especially at night, accounts for most police profiling and brazenly illegal stops, but I have no doubt that young minority males experience more of it.

I'm middle eastern. I've been followed by a police car for 15-20 minutes at a time (even out of their local jurisdiction) three times so far.

This has always happened when I'm driving in a rich neighborhood.

Targeting definitely does happen. I'm not the only person with stories like this.

For the record I'm in Pennsylvania.

In another comment, they said the police never gave a reason for these stops.

Yes, we can blame them.

Why? It's reasonable to assume there's a significant correlation between this mismatch and criminal activity.

No, it's clearly not. By an overwhelming margin, most people driving "the wrong car" are not criminals; "wrong car" is not a real predictor for criminality.

Imagine a jar with two colors of gumballs: red and green. Now imagine you knew that 1 out of 1000 green gumballs were poisoned and 1 out of 10000 red gumballs were poisoned. Which gumball would you choose to chew if you had to choose? Why?

My guess is that you would choose the red gumball. Even though the vast majority of green gumballs are perfectly fine, the color of the green gumball is still a predictor for poison.

Here’s the kicker though: the more times you test a gumball for poison, the more poisonous that colour gumball becomes.

Low socioeconomic status is a predictor for criminality, as well as a predictor for car type owned. Thus car type is correlated with criminality.

High socioeconomic status is a predictor for white collar criminality, as well as a predictor for car type owned. Thus car type is correlated with criminality.

sure, but how often does a traffic stop lead to the discovery of evidence that justifies a charge for a white collar crime? the person would have to be driving around with incriminating (likely very technical) documents and do something that gives the officer probably cause to search the vehicle. the papers won't even look bad unless the officer already knows what to look for.

on the other hand, traffic stop -> suspected intoxication -> field sobriety test / drug dogs seems like a very common routine.

And this is how negative feedback loops happen.

Is it?

First part of your sentence, about most people, is obviously correct, but has no relation to the second part of your sentence about it not being a predictor for criminality.

Cops aren’t allowed to pull people over for correlations. They need probable cause.

One was a 99 Monte Carlo. Another was a 97 Civic. Others were similar. Early 2000s Hyundai. All similar in that they were low mileage, but ugly because of paint issues or hail damage, etc.

I work from home a lot. I don't like shaving. I enjoy comfortable clothes. I go to the gym on the days I work from home. I also have what has been described to me as the male version of "resting bitch face" - which I take to mean I look angry, even when I'm not.

The net net of this is that I'm often running errands in public, during the middle of the day, with a scruffy beard, wearing sweatpants or other grubby clothes, scowling to some degree, and sometimes smelling of sweat and BO (if the store I'm going to is on the way home from the gym)

I will get plenty of suspicious looks from store proprietors and other customers. Oftentimes cashiers are surprised when I address them pleasantly. Obviously they are judging me by my appearance. Most likely they've had other interactions with people who looked like me that did not go well.

The thing is - I don't blame them. I know I look "suspicious" by the usual definitions. It's not really fair of course, but I believe this "pattern matching" behavior was probably part of our evolution. An ability to perform quick judgments based on past experience was probably useful historically. It still is in many cases not involving discriminatory practices. I guess my point is - cops are humans too. They should be held to higher standards, but if the people who commit crimes are often driving shabby cars, they are going to start putting those things together (fairly or not)

> I guess my point is - cops are humans too. They should be held to higher standards, but if the people who commit crimes are often driving shabby cars, they are going to start putting those things together (fairly or not)

Your argument is that there’s nothing that can be done about police racism, because of your theory of evolutionary psychology, based on your reluctance to shower after the gym?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com