Has anyone here been pulled over for failing to signal a lane change?
I know the consensus here is to refuse to answer any questions, but I think if I had tried that approach in this situation, I would have spent the night in jail (and maybe longer, depending on the availability of a judge).
I was pretty pissed off at the time, but I only let myself show it after he let me go.
He asked me what I did for a living. I should have refused to answer that as irrelevant and none-of-his-business, and I could easily have afforded the unjust consequences (unlike many people who are racially profiled), yet I still felt powerless and coerced to answer. I regret that. I was polite, cooperative, and with my wife. The officer was rude and menacing. The racial profiling and assumptions about how I could be driving a nice car were clear as day.
Wow, that's infuriating. Tough call what to do in that situation.
(nah, prolly better not)
I have always been polite and honest. Got away with verbal warnings both times (was above the speed limit).
Do you really think he asked you what you did for a living out of racial profiling?
That being said, instead of thinking about the question first and then asking if it points to racial profiling, start the other way: Do you think racial profiling exists? If yes, is it plausible that an officer would ask a non-white person this question after profiling?
What other purpose does that question have other than to further profile you? How does it bear in any way on a driving infraction?
1. To find out who you are.
2. To decide if they should give you a ticket or let you go.
3. To try to get you to give them permission to search you and your car, or to get you to say something that gives them probable cause to search you and your car without your permission.
Whether it makes sense to answer a question or not depends on the reason behind that question.
If you refuse to answer the #1 questions, that is your right. They can then arrest you, and hold you until they can figure out who you are.
They cannot arrest you for not answering the #2 or #3 questions, and you should definitely not answer the #3 questions. Even if you never use illegal drugs or engage in any other illegal activity, a passenger may have accidentally dropped something in your car.
If you don't answer the #2 questions, you are almost certainly going to get the ticket for whatever they pulled you over for. If you want to get off with a warning, you have to give the officer some reason to not give you a ticket, and that's hard to do without saying something (especially if you were actually violating a traffic law).
-----
Justice Kennedy wrote, "While we recognize petitioner's strong belief that he should not have to disclose his identity, the Fifth Amendment does not override the Nevada Legislature's judgment to the contrary absent a reasonable belief that the disclosure would tend to incriminate him."
I've talked to my kid a lot about the relationship between the cops and citizens. He was very calm about it, and maintained his speed. The cop passed and left after a minute or so.
Failing to signal. Infinitesimal failure to stop. Changing lanes just a smidgeon before the solid white line changes to dashed. These are all just entry points for cops to fuck with you, either just for the sake of fucking with you, or to escalate up into something that goes on their performance evaluation metrics. 'Cause you know that they get measured, and you can't measure "didn't pull that guy over because he wasn't doing anything." Their incentives are your peril.
And, I wish police would fine people for tailgating. I've never seen it happen.
That sounds like being goaded.
>Maybe I am naive,
No disrespect intended, but I think you are.
>but I think that assuming the cops are out to get you is a bad place to start from.
I didn't start from there. I've been around them my whole life.
I've actually seen that happen, it was obviously on purpose after a guy was riding someone during commute.
I was with my brother both times. We were shouted at, separated, patted down, and questioned repeatedly, trying to find some disparity in our stories and an excuse to search the truck.
I imagine it would have been much worse/more aggressive if we were minorities.
And the locals will tell you where the trick half-mile-long speed limit drops that you'll never notice until you're pulled over are.
Yes, exactly that. We like those things. We have almost all of those things in Sussex County NJ, and a good job to boot, but it's a really nice town to visit. Reminds me of where I went to school in Boone NC.
I've always thought you Americans were just complaining about "first world problems." However, between Charleston and Sandra Bland I am really sitting up and taking notice now: please continue to demand answers. These hate crimes simply cannot be a reality in advanced societies.
Hey man, Russia and China are first world countries too. But seriously, that's one of the most interesting comments I've seen on this.
First World originally meant the US and its allies:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_World
The later confuzzled meaning, where First World is associated with being highly economically developed, also doesn't really apply to Russia and China:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BRIC
There is still a stark difference in economic productivity between Russia/China and the countries with high per capita GDP:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_%28PP...
I'm not so sure that's the case though these days. Everyone has a bad mood, a bad day or a sucky life, the only difference is some have a gun and the ability to lawfully leave me to bleed out on the side of the road. Is this the person I going to meet when I get pull over next time?
On the flip side, a couple years earlier, when I had just moved to the Bay area in 1995 (from Vancouver,BC ) I had gotten a bit lost with friends, and had slowed down, and were stopping at various intersections in East Palo Alto trying to get our bearing. (I just realized - this is something anybody who grows up with GPS enabled smartphones will never have to do) A police office pulled us over to find out what we were doing, and then suggested (once again, really nicely), that we probably shouldn't be stopping in this neighborhood at that time of night (East Palo Alto, unbeknownst to us, was a very high-crime area in 1995)
I guess my point is - Police pull people over when their spidey sense goes off all the time. And it can be all sorts of things that will trigger it. I guess I'm blessed with white skin, but the many interactions I've had with police in which they've engaged me because whatever it was I was doing seemed sketchy at the time, always ended up well. Though, honestly - they've got guns, so I've also been pretty sensitive to the fact that if I made them nervous they might shoot me.
That seems reasonable.
As the officer, you're not even likely to notice you're doing it. As a person of the "wrong skin color" driving through a high-rent neighborhood, you'll start to notice real fast that your commute is disrupted all the damn time.
My personal story: I'm white, but I used to drive a beater with crappy temperature control and was taking a new route home late at night while wearing a stocking cap. Got pulled over for ostensibly making a left on red (on a deserted road in the middle of the night, when I'm pretty confident the light was green). If the officer's real reason for pulling me over is that I looked like I was casing the neighborhood for a place to rob, I don't really blame him; I was dressed like one of the Wet Bandits from Home Alone. ;)
Be that as it may, the "spidey sense" excuse could and should hold at least some water with most people, if they trust the intentions of the police. But I grew up with harassment by the NYPD and then small-time police in the Hudson Valley, and saw non-white friends and bystanders (I'm white) get it ten times worse. Surely, this applies to many in the US.
In the few experiences I've had where police help was legitimately needed, I was met with bored annoyed "what can we do?" apathy. So, forgive me if I respectfully doubt that any significant number of street-level police cultivate some intuitive sense for crime, when routine profiling, harassment, and fabrication (much easier modes of operating) seem to be standard practice.
American relations with law-enforcement are about as low-trust as it gets in a 1st world country, that's the unfortunate reality, which will take decades to turn around, if ever.
As for the pull over, out of state tags and not signaling when a cop is coming up on you just makes you a good choice to pull over.
How do we know? Isn't that by nature the nefarious issue with racism. It hides in plain sight.
Note the following shows a 50% difference in call back rates based on name alone, with identical resumes, which is pretty relevant for techies looking at resumes. http://www.nber.org/digest/sep03/w9873.html
http://www.clarionledger.com/story/news/2015/05/12/marvin-ba...
http://www.msnbc.com/the-last-word/florida-executes-mentally...
http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-nypd-shooter-20141221-st...
I've heard that's much less about race than about class; Jamal may be a predominately black name but even more than that it's a predominately poor name. I'd be interested to see a replication that watched the names by average income/education/similar - or one that used stereotypically rich and poor names within the same race.
I'd be interested to see how the study you suggest turns out, but I wouldn't expect it to be much different; there's too much other evidence of purely racial bias.
First they attempted to assess names race, and got rid of names that were insufficiently suggestive of race.
The study varied postal addresses and included African American names from richer neighborhoods and whites from poorer neighborhoods, and included both low and high quality resumes. Hypothetically, if people were associating black names with low class more then white names, then there should be a significant difference in the benefits of a "good" neighborhood between whites with a good neighborhood and blacks. There was none.
Further, one would assume that if class was the determining factor, then a better quality of resume might offset this. It did, but to a lesser degree for African American Names... that is, whites got more effect from a better resume then blacks did.
A white name was, by the researchers estimates, the equivalent of an additional eight years of experience for black people.
If being perceived as black, or if names that are predominantly understood as black are sufficient to assign a person to a lower class, I'd argue that that's inherently racial discrimination.
When someone says "I saw you driving fast behind me, and I got out of your way" the correct response is probably "oh, thank you maam, I misunderstood. Sorry for pulling you over. You have a nice day" or somesuch.
Any police officers knows if they really need such an excuse, they just need to follow a given car for a few minutes: it's guaranteed something will happen which justifies the traffic stop.
And the worst thing is they tail you when they follow you, making you nervous and more likely to make a mistake. That's also what the officer did here.
Tailgating does apply to officers of the law, they need to act in a way that reduces the possibility of serious harm proportional to any criminals being pursued. Police on duty can be guilty of DWDC&A or dangerous driving.
Example - not tailgating - http://road.cc/content/news/64021-speeding-police-officer-co... an officer using sirens & lights convicted of dangerous driving.
Sadly Smiley died/committed suicide during a police raid on his house.
Sounds like time for one of those discretionary arrests for a traffic violation."
Just wow. A lot of the responses on this forum are incredibly entitled, power trip-y, and precisely why no one trusts cops anymore.
• 8.4% of all drivers were pulled over in a traffic stop that year.
• 9.9% of male drivers were stopped, 7.0% of female drivers.
• 8.4% of white drivers were stopped, 8.8% of black drivers were stopped, and 9.1% of hispanic drivers were stopped.
• Speeding was the most common reason for being stopped.
• 85% of drivers felt the stop was legitimate. This breaks down as 86% of white drivers thought the stop was legitimate, 74% for black drivers, and 82% for hispanic drivers.
• 5% of stops led to a search of the driver, the vehicle, or both. Male drivers were more likely to be searched than female drivers (7.4% vs. 1.6%). By race, it was 3.9% for whites, 12.3% for blacks, and 5.8% for hispanics.
http://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=tp&tid=702
By 2011, the percent of drivers of each race that were stopped had gone up, to 10% of whites, 13% of blacks, and 10% of hispanics.
• Black or African American alone, percent definition and source info Black or African American alone, percent, 2013 (a) 13.2%
• American Indian and Alaska Native alone, percent definition and source info American Indian and Alaska Native alone, percent, 2013 (a) 1.2%
• Asian alone, percent definition and source info Asian alone, percent, 2013 (a) 5.3%
• Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander alone, percent definition and source info Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander alone, percent, 2013 (a) 0.2%
• Two or More Races, percent definition and source info Two or More Races, percent, 2013 2.4%
• Hispanic or Latino, percent definition and source info Hispanic or Latino, percent, 2013 (b) 17.1%
• White alone, not Hispanic or Latino, percent definition and source info White alone, not Hispanic or Latino, percent, 2013 62.6%
I wonder though if there was something off about the license plate associated with the car. Does anyone know if this thing was completely clean?
Can I just check: you think it's reasonable to be irritated after being stopped after being caught speeding? Or you think Sandra Bland is reasonable in being irritated?
When he got to the car, he claimed to smell a large amount of alcohol on my friend and me. It was like noon on a Saturday and we had not been drinking at all. He asked me to get out and do a sobriety test, which I did and passed. After that he just gave me a warning for the tabs, which I was not expecting considering how out of date they were. He never mentioned the lane change again after he first said why he pulled me over. Full disclosure, I'm white.
Of course, that smartass approach may get you more crap in the future.
I was escorted out of my car and asked how much marijuana I was carrying. I wasn't carrying any, so I told them so. They searched the car and didn't find any, so then escorted me to the police station for further questioning.
The investigative officer there quickly realized that I was not the person they initially thought. Overall a great experience.
I have seen someone who was pulled over by the police, then let go, then make an illegal u-turn while turning back onto the road and was pulled over again within seconds :)
Edit: I have been randomly questioned a few times playing Ingress at post offices at 3am.
Was never ticketed for it, but did have to entertain the officer's BS line of questioning about where I was going and such.
I also got told off a few times for soliciting without a license.
Whatever else went on here, that part was not out of the ordinary.
It's why young African Americans are more likely to be arrested for minor drug offenses, despite offending less then the average young white person. (see http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/06/04/t... ) And indeed if you look at the ACLU Report on disparities between whites and blacks for minor marijuana offenses, page 178 has Waller County, where this happened, as one of the ones with disparities in arrests above the national average. Note: It's a PDF: https://www.aclu.org/files/assets/aclu-thewaronmarijuana-rel...
How can you tell?
Surely the point you're making is that the real reason for pulling the person over is not the one given, how then can you establish it's "racial profiling".
I've been pulled over (UK) by police for having a stop light out, reasonable as it's a traffic violation. They asked the usual sort of questions and I got a "producer" (notice to produce various documents at a police station in the near future). How could you establish that this was because the officer was acting racist towards me?
Telling the race of a person from behind when following their car seems quite hard.
Statistics could show that more of a particular race were pulled over but that race could constitute a greater proportion of the local poor who being less able to keep their vehicles in good order are more likely to be stopped. That would create an apparent bias were there was none.
It's about time to do something about these context stops. They are just too easy for the weak-minded to abuse for their own ends.