A new right to know reason for police stops
Ever had the feeling that officers in a police patrol car pulled your vehicle over for some reason very much different from the vague one they stated?
You're certainly not alone — especially if you happen to be Black.
Happily, as Bob Egelko reports in the San Francisco Chronicle, “a new state law, due to take effect next year, will require officers to tell people the reason they are being stopped before questioning them, unless an officer `reasonably believes that withholding the reason for the stop is necessary to protect life or property from imminent threat.'”
The legislation, AB2773 by Assemblymember Chris Holden, D-Pasadena, was signed into law by Gov. Gavin Newsom.
Even with the important exemption that allows officers leeway because of reasonable belief about dangers, police groups opposed the legislation.
“Traffic stops can be among the most dangerous types of interactions that peace officers encounter,” and they should remain free to take immediate action, the California State Sheriffs' Association told lawmakers, Egelko reports. The bill is “so strict,” the association said, that it would prohibit officers from asking for someone's identification “or even asking a person to turn off the vehicle's ignition prior to disclosing the reason for the stop.”
But the California Public Defenders Association said the measure “would increase transparency and public confidence in law enforcement . ... Preserving civil rights is every bit as important as preserving public safety on our highways.”
It's not just anecdotal that “driving while Black” in California and elsewhere is a good way to get pulled over and questioned by police in itself. The Chronicle has reported that data from San Francisco's Police Commission from July 2018 to June 2022 showed that Black people in the city were 4.4 times as likely as White people to be pulled over for a traffic violation, “and 10.5 times as likely to be targets of a pretext stop.”
A pretext stop is just what it sounds like, and is used throughout the state by police and Highway Patrol officers who will say that they chose to pull over a vehicle because of an air freshener hanging from the rearview mirror or to check how darkly the windows are tinted when really they are looking for an excuse to search the car and its passengers for illegal drugs or other contraband.
That's why San Francisco, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and the entire state of Virginia have recently either banned or greatly restricted pretext stops. Separately, another bill proposed in the Legislature, SB 50 by Sen. Steven Bradford, D-Gardena, would ban pretext stops of both motorists and bicyclists.
We understand that many times over the years the randomness of a police stop has yielded important results for the public safety. Egelko in the Chronicle notes that being pulled over for having an expired registration tag on his license plate ultimately led to the arrest of Timothy McVeigh, the White supremacist and mass murderer who killed 168 people at a federal building in Oklahoma City.
We believe that law enforcement officers need to be able to rely on hunches and learned intuition the same as the rest of us do in our work. If they believe they have a dangerous character who needs apprehending, then fudge away about the real reason for a traffic stop. The law that goes into effect in 2024 quite reasonably permits subterfuge when either lives or property are in harm's way.
But California peace officers going forward will have to do without random shakedowns in their utility kits as they seek to preserve law and order. That will ultimately be a good thing for the civil right to not be unduly harassed that citizens have a right to expect.