Minor traffic stops take deadly turns
Drug overdoses, crashes and suicides underscore calls for reform
In 2016, when a Harris County deputy constable shot and killed Ashtian Barnes after pulling him over for unpaid tolls, the Houston community exploded. Activists protested. The family sued.
Mark Owens died more quietly. Pulled over in August 2018 by police in the East Texas city of Rice because his license plate light was too dim, he apparently panicked as police questioned him, sneaking his drugs into his mouth. Hours later, he died of a methamphetamine overdose, records show.
A traffic stop triggered Austin Cantu’s death, too. He fled when Big Spring police in June 2018 attempted to pull him over for a violation. Cantu hit speeds of over 100 mph before he crashed into a tree, killing himself and severely injuring his passenger.
Traffic stops that devolve into fatal shootings invite intense scrutiny. Yet police don’t have to pull a trigger for a minor roadside interaction to turn deadly. A Houston Chronicle analysis of 118 fatal traffic stops since 2015 found a significant number of motorists died from panicky self-administered drug overdoses, high-speed pursuit crashes and, for reasons that may never be known, suicides.
In some cases the motorist’s actions played a clear and decisive role in his or her death. Yet, as illustrated by Sandra Bland’s 2015 jailhouse suicide — following a traffic stop for failing to use her turn signal — culpability in other fatal encounters was less clear-cut.
The fatalities raise questions about the human cost of investigative traffic stops, a policing strategy that has been accepted practice for decades yet which research shows often has minimal effect on public
safety. “We’ve gotten to a point where much of the public does not want us making those types of stops,” said J. Thomas Manger, former president of the Major Cities Chiefs Association. “You have to weigh the damage done on a stop where someone has done nothing wrong — versus the small percentage of times where you may have actually prevented a crime.”
In an ongoing series, the Chronicle has examined the underreported costs of aggressive traffic enforcement. It identified police departments most likely to stop speeders for fine revenue, those that conduct the most discretionary vehicle searches and the agencies that commonly use non-moving vehicle violations — broken tail lights, license plate violations — that critics say are a pretext to look for contraband.
Citizens have been asked to tolerate occasional roadside stops and investigations as a small cost for the greater public safety good. Yet studies have shown the stops and searches to be racially biased and do little to lower crime. Most discretionary searches turn up nothing.
And while both police and activists have long acknowledged that traffic stops can be dangerous, it is only more recently that experts have begun to examine how and when it happens. In a 2019 study, University of Arkansas law professor Jordan Blair Woods found that stops made clearly for traffic safety only — speeding, for example — overwhelmingly ended without incident.
But those that began as, or pivoted into, investigations could quickly turn volatile. “A considerable amount of violence against the police during routine traffic stops occurs when the stops escalate after officers invoke their authority in a substantial way during the stop, for instance, ordering drivers or passengers out of cars, touching drivers or passengers, or searching them or their vehicles,” Woods wrote.
“Look at what happened to Sandra Bland,” said state Rep. Garnet Coleman (D-Houston), who promoted legislation after her death to overhaul and limit minor traffic stops. “I think that there should be no doubt in everyone’s mind that if she hadn’t been stopped that day she would still be alive.”
A number of jurisdictions have begun limiting the traffic stops local law enforcement can make to only those imperiling public safety, such as speeding and erratic driving.
“Is it critically important to stop and ticket people for having license plates improperly affixed to their car?” said Nick Hudson, Policy Advocacy Strategist for the ACLU of Texas. “We need to get off officers’ plates things that do not directly implicate public safety.”
Pretextual stops
On a spring day in 1995, a Noble County, Okla., trooper spotted a yellow Mercury missing a registration tag and pulled it over. The driver turned out to be Timothy McVeigh, fleeing from the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building he’d blown up in Oklahoma City.
Police often point to the incident as a reminder that using traffic stops to keep an eye out for other wrongdoing is a crucial tactic in making communities safe.
The practice received an official stamp of approval in 1996, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled any traffic violation, no matter how minor, was sufficient reason to conduct a roadside investigation. Now, “Pretextual traffic stops have become so commonplace that it is difficult for civilians to discern when they are being pulled over for just a traffic violation or something else — like their race,” Woods, the Arkansas professor, wrote.
It has been an article of faith among police that traffic stops are among the profession’s most volatile and dangerous interactions. “When we approach a vehicle, we’re out in the open. They are not,” said Houston Police Officer’s Union President Douglas Griffith.
Since 2015, seven Texas officers have been fatally shot; two were killed by vehicles. But research suggests the perception of high danger is more lore than reality.
“The actual danger it poses is very, very small and isolated,” acknowledged Patrick O’Burke, a former top official at the Texas Department of Public Safety.
Recent studies suggest stops most likely to turn volatile appear to occur when drivers are pulled over for reasons other than clear and understandable safety infractions such as speeding, and neither the officer nor the vehicle’s occupants know what is going to happen.
“Our data show that the interaction between officer and driver is considerably more strained in investigatory stops than traffic-safety stops,” wrote Charles Epp, a University of Kansas professor and author of “Pulled Over: How Police Stops Define Race and Citizenship.”
“This heightened tension reflects the fact that officers are acting in ways regarded by most drivers as highly intrusive, invasive and basically unfair — and officers know this, are already suspicious of the driver and are prepared to use force to maintain control. They have converted a stop for a trivial violation into a deeply unsettling criminal investigation.”
When a Gladewater police officer began closely following Patrick Wise on a November 2016 night in East Texas for what he later said was an obscured license plate, Wise and his passenger quickly became anxious. They discussed how Wise “wasn’t violating any traffic laws and the pickup truck was legal in every way,” according to filings in a subsequent lawsuit.
Wise stopped when Officer Robert Carlsen turned on his lights, but then jumped out and ran, records show. After a brief foot chase, the two ended up corralled in a partially fenced lot, where they fought until Carlsen fatally shot him.
“Traffic stops that are what they seem to be don’t create bewilderment or fear because you know what’s happening,” said Frank Baumgartner, a University of North Carolina professor and expert on traffic stops and racial profiling.
“If police are directed to engage in investigative stops a million times,” Epp added in an interview, “a certain number of motorists will be killed.”
Fatal traffic encounters data
To examine fatal Texas traffic encounters, the Chronicle used a database of deadly police interactions compiled by the Texas Justice Initiative, as well as death-in-custody reports police departments must file with the Texas attorney general. Reporters also reviewed a database of police shootings dating back to 2015.
The newspaper reviewed 118 fatal encounters. Drug overdoses were responsible for 16; suicides ended the lives of another 11 motorists. Nine people died in pursuits. A small number — including Gregory Barrett, who records show died in jail of COVID after fleeing a Houston police officer stopping him for running a red light — died of medical causes.
The vast majority of the traffic enforcement-related homicides — 79 — involved police gunfire. But not all.
When Williamson County sheriff ’s deputies tried to pull over Javier Ambler in March 2019 for failing to dim his headlights to oncoming traffic, he fled, leading police on a chase ending with a struggle and tasing. His death, from cardiac arrest “in combination with forcible restraint” was also ruled a homicide.
Other traffic stop-related fatalities were classified as accidental.
Kristina Douglas was pulled over by Humble police this past May for expired registration tags; Victoria police stopped Alton Sparks in April 2017 for an unspecified traffic violation. Records show both died after swallowing drugs in their possession (presumably to avoid criminal charges) when the stops veered from simple traffic enforcement into criminal investigations.
James McGraw’s March 2017 death was also classified as an accident. When a Harris County sheriff ’s deputy tried to stop him for expired registration tags, he took off, leading police on a chase through Katy before fatally slamming into a tree. Police later reported finding a “useable” amount of heroin. “That could’ve been why he was running,” a spokesman said.
Some high-speed chases are unavoidable. But pursuits are dangerous for participants and bystanders. Studies show about one person is killed every day in a police chase. A recent analysis found that Texas — led by Harris County — tops the nation in the fatalities. The Chronicle identified several incidents in which bystanders and passengers were injured during attempted traffic stops, including an elderly woman shot through a wall by errant gunfire and a police officer struck by friendly fire.
Sean Kelly, stopped by a Bexar County sheriff’s deputy in May 2020 for having no front license plate, was among the nearly dozen drivers who ended their own lives during a traffic stop. After a short foot chase, he took out a small handgun and killed himself.
Coleman said such tragedies were why he sought to limit minor traffic stops as part of the 2017 Sandra Bland Act, a provision he said eventually was stripped out at the request of police organizations. “You bring people together in a stressed-out situation, somebody ends up hurt or dead,” he said.
A small but growing number of places have begun trying. Berkeley, Calif., removed police from many traffic enforcement duties; an Austin task force has recommended similar reforms.
Oakland, Lansing, Mich., and Philadelphia ordered police to limit traffic stops to only those considered a matter of public safety. Last year, Virginia enacted legislation prohibiting traffic stops for minor vehicle violations unrelated to unsafe driving.
After Fayetteville, N.C., police reduced the minor stops, the department reported investigative stops all but disappeared and searches of Black motorists dropped. Officers increased arrests of speeders and drunk drivers and were freed up to perform more community policing.
Unpaid tolls
Such a policy might have spared Ashtian Barnes’s life.
Barnes was driving his girlfriend’s car, which had a record of unpaid tolls, on Beltway 8 in 2016 when Precinct 5 Dep. Constable Roberto Felix pulled him over for the outstanding bill. But the stop turned into a criminal investigation when the constable told Barnes he smelled marijuana and ordered him out of the car.
After a brief pause, Barnes put the car in gear to flee. Video shows Felix hopping onto the running board, and the vehicle barreling several dozen yards down the shoulder, the lawman clinging to the car. Seconds later, two shots rang out.
Janice Barnes described her oldest child as a jokester who adored his two sisters. He’d had several minor run-ins with the law, including arrests for small amounts of marijuana and criminal mischief, that Barnes thinks might have put him on edge during the stop.
“My son was afraid,” she said. “He was just trying to leave.”
O’Burke, the former DPS commander, said the fault ultimately lay with Barnes. “From a law enforcement perspective, if Barnes had surrendered, this wouldn’t have happened,” he said.