Posted on 04/10/2023 12:52:08 PM PDT by ChicagoConservative27
More than two dozen members of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) are urging the Department of Transportation to condemn the “unjust and discriminatory status quo” of traffic enforcement and implement reforms that will reduce racial inequities in traffic stops.
In a letter to Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, 27 members of the CBC, including Democratic Reps. Ayanna Pressley (Mass.), Cori Bush (Mo.), Jamaal Bowman (N.Y.) and Ilhan Omar (Minn.), expressed a “grave concern for the wellbeing of Black drivers.”
HOUSE Congressional Black Caucus presses Buttigieg to reform ‘racist traffic enforcement’ BY CHEYANNE M. DANIELS - 04/10/23 2:55 PM ET SHARE TWEET
File photo – (AP Photo/Matt Rourke) More than two dozen members of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) are urging the Department of Transportation to condemn the “unjust and discriminatory status quo” of traffic enforcement and implement reforms that will reduce racial inequities in traffic stops.
In a letter to Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, 27 members of the CBC, including Democratic Reps. Ayanna Pressley (Mass.), Cori Bush (Mo.), Jamaal Bowman (N.Y.) and Ilhan Omar (Minn.), expressed a “grave concern for the wellbeing of Black drivers.”
“On our nation’s roads and highways, Black motorists have experienced disproportionate scrutiny and excessive force under the guise of traffic enforcement,” the lawmakers said. “As Secretary of the United States Department of Transportation (DOT), we urge you to condemn the status quo of traffic enforcement and develop reforms to reduce racial inequities in traffic stops.”
More than 20 million people are pulled over for traffic violations every year, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics. Despite Black people being less likely to have access to a vehicle, Black motorists are more likely to be stopped than their white counterparts.
(Excerpt) Read more at thehill.com ...
“The Traffic Clause” is a long misunderstood part of our US Constitution.
Why not just go ahead and say laws don’t apply to blacks?..
Traffic enforcement has NOHTING to do with the federal government.
From what I’ve seen there needs to be more severe traffic enforcement in areas that are being supported by our hard work. Drivers in those areas often don’t have insurance, and drive like irresponsible, entitled criminals.
Saying it without saying it.
“More than two dozen members of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) are urging the Department of Transportation to condemn the “unjust and discriminatory status quo” of traffic enforcement and implement reforms that will reduce racial inequities in traffic stops.”
What’s NOT racist?
In an article about police shootings in last Sunday’s New York Times (8/31), Michael Wines disputes the conventional wisdom about a disproportionate number of African-Americans being shot by police, saying there are no data one way or another. But Wines revives the canard about blacks being disproportionately targeted in traffic stops.
There actually is a study for that.
Throughout the 1990s, the nation was fixated on tales of jack-booted New Jersey state troopers who were stopping speeders on the turnpike just because they were black! In a 2000 primary debate, Vice President Al Gore sneered at then-New Jersey Sen. Bill Bradley, saying, “Racial profiling practically began in New Jersey, Senator Bradley.”
Attorney General Eric Holder recently paid tribute to the myth, claiming that when he was in college, he had been stopped “driving from New York to Washington.” He didn’t mention how fast he was going.
The story never made sense. How could the troopers tell the race of drivers in speeding cars? Did they wait until the driver rolled down his window and, if he was white, say, “Oh, sorry — have a nice day!”
But the Clinton administration was slapping consent decrees for racial profiling on police departments across the country, and the N.J. highway patrol was its prime evidence, based on a study that a child wouldn’t believe.
As is usually the case with bogus race studies, the pivotal 1993 survey compared speed stops on the New Jersey turnpike to the population of all drivers on the turnpike — not with the population of all speeders on the turnpike.
Such meaningless studies are popular on the left, where it is assumed that people of different races, genders and ethnicities will always behave identically in all respects.
If fewer women pass the physical test to become firefighters, that can only be because of sexism. If fewer blacks pass the written test — that’s racism. If fewer whites play professional basketball — no, forget that one. Sports are important. (Unlike arson or vehicular homicide.)
Nonetheless, based on the assumption that blacks speed just as much as whites — because to believe otherwise would be racist! — Temple University’s John Lamberth announced that while only 13.5 percent of drivers along a particular stretch of the New Jersey Turnpike were black, 46 percent of those stopped for speeding were black.
Racial profiling, Q.E.D.
The New York Times ran a dozen articles trumpeting the nonsense study, proclaiming it “the most thorough documentation of the contention that the police regularly pulled over black drivers.” Lamberth himself praised his research for ruling out the possibility of coincidence — and if you can’t trust Lamberth on his own study, who can you trust?
Largely on the basis of that investigation, New Jersey Superior Court Judge Robert E. Francis threw out the contraband evidence seized from 19 African-American men in traffic stops on the turnpike. New Jersey’s ninny governor, Christie Todd Whitman, pronounced her state’s troopers guilty of racial profiling and agreed to a consent decree with the Department of Justice (DOJ) that basically prohibited the troopers from doing their jobs.
Statisticians, and other people with common sense, tried to explain to liberals that human beings are not identical. Any study purporting to show that too many blacks are stopped for speeding must first determine how many speeders are black.
Being denounced as virtual Klansmen, the state troopers demanded a real study.
Confident that any new study would merely serve to confirm the troopers’ racism, the DOJ and the New Jersey attorney general commissioned a statistical investigation from the Public Services Research Institute in Maryland.
The institute’s study was a spectacular thing. Using expensive monitors with high-speed cameras and radar detectors, they clocked the speeds of nearly 40,000 drivers on the relevant section of the turnpike. Three researchers then examined the photos to determine the race of the driver — without knowing whether the driver was speeding, which was defined as going more than 80 mph in 65 mph zones.
The result: No racial profiling.
Blacks constituted 25 percent of all speeders and they were 23 percent of drivers stopped for speeding. Controlling for age and gender, blacks sped at about twice the rate of whites. The racial disparity was even greater for drivers exceeding 90 mph.
Inasmuch as the study was irrefutable, Mark Posner, a lefty Clinton holdover in the Bush Justice Department, tried to block it from being released, continuously demanding more information.
But no matter how statisticians fiddled with the data, the results were identical: Blacks were twice as likely to speed as whites — and at much higher speeds. The troopers were completely vindicated.
When the study finally leaked — over Posner’s objections — he informed the press it wasn’t “valid” without articulating any actual problems with it. The attorney general of New Jersey, David Samson, nonsensically said the results didn’t matter because New Jersey had already admitted its troopers were engaging in racial profiling.
Perhaps the Times is right and there is no comprehensive study of police shootings by race. But it’s also possible that there is one, it didn’t come out as planned, so it has never seen the light of day.
I am quite concerned with the white background on the Free Republic website.
“”Despite Black people being less likely to have access to a vehicle, Black motorists are more likely to be stopped than their white counterparts.””
Crikey!!!
Do you know it rains more in black neighborhoods than it does in white ones?
I am so confused, should I buy a white car or a black car?
I had a white car and assumed I would have privilege, but I was always harrassed. I budgeted 1000/year for atty.
I now have a black car and I have not yet been pulled over in it, nor in my red or green cars.
That's everyone, everywhere anymore. Seriously. It drives me bananas (pun intended).
Folks have been posting that silly "shopping cart test" to judge character, but all you have to do is drive on the roads to see how bad people really behave. And it's universal.
The joys of “multiculturalism”
I was teaching intro to Ethics (i.e. philosophy), and one day the students turned in their assignment, which was an analysis, using philosophical approaches, of the issue of police forces in OH deciding to stop pulling over any African-American drivers for traffic enforement, because they were tired of being accused of racism. I remember this clearly, because I collected the assignments, walked back to my faculty office, and saw a crowd around the TV. The second tower was falling. It was September 11, 2001.
Some things just never go away.
Please refer to the Chris Rock tape of a few days ago.
First part of program: OBEY THE LAW.
I’m ready for the Dims to quit trafficking in race.
Blacks speed and break traffic laws at high rates, just like they commit violent crimes at rates well in excess of their numbers in the population. This has been well documented.
These CBC members involved should be told to get out in “the community” and teach people to not break the law so much. I’m tired of the whining.
The racist hate group, Congressional Black Caucus,…
There, NOW it reads correctly.
And those are the people far more likely to be harmed by black drivers who cant be bothered to obey traffic laws, especially since most MVAs occur close to home.
.....you beat me to the keyboard....I am sooooo sick of this s**t I can hardly read any more about it....it reminds me of New Jersey several years (decades...?) ago when the New Jersey State Police (I believe...) were accused of targeting black drivers for speeding...many, if not most, were caught on radar and many of these stops were at night....and they were INDEED speeding...!!so the radar could detect which speeders were black and which ones were not...?? to the Congdressional Black Caucus I say “Go suck an egg...!!” ......
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