Police handcuffed me after license-plate reader error

Combine old-style racism with new surveillance technology such as automatic licenseplate readers and the results can be terrifying, if not deadly. Especially if you’re driving while Black in the Bay Area.

As the director of a racial justice organization, I knew the dismal statistics. But one Saturday early last year, my family became another link in the story: My wife and I, along with our two daughters and a friend, were returning from a hike on Mt. Diablo when we were stopped on the road and surrounded by a slew of gun-wielding police.

What we didn’t know was that, while we were hiking, someone had swiped our license plate and substituted theirs; we pulled out of the parking area with a plate that had recently been involved in an armed robbery in San Francisco. As we drove through downtown Walnut Creek, we saw flashing blue and red lights in the rearview mirror.

I pulled over and heard a loudspeaker blasting at us, ordering me out of the car: “Get down on your knees and place your hands on your head.”

As I got down on my knees, I saw one of many guns pointed at me. Seven cop cars. I heard and felt handcuffs being put around my wrists.

And right there with me were all those other victims of ill-conceived and unequally applied models of policing. Jacob Blake, who was shot and nearly killed by a police officer in front of his children. Philando Castile, who was shot and killed by a police officer as he sat in the passenger seat. Brittany Giliam, a Black mother who, along with her children and nieces — the youngest just 6 years old — were arrested at gunpoint, handcuffed and forced to lay on the pavement for nearly two hours. The police said they thought the car was stolen but never allowed Brittany to show them her car’s registration.

Our experience ended better than many. The police were able to confirm that our license plate had been stolen. We were sent on our way. And no one was killed. But the trauma has lingered.

License-plate readers throughout California indiscriminately scan and retain vehicle identifications as we travel through our day-to-day lives, sending out alerts if they see a plate of a car presumed stolen or one that has been involved in an incident under criminal investigation. Unfortunately, they are wrong at least 1 in 10 times, and like almost everything else in our policing infrastructure, the technology is unequally applied to concentrate the greatest scrutiny in communities of color and lower-income communities.

In 2015, San Francisco paid a settlement of $495,000 to Denise Green for wrongly stopping her in the Mission District several years earlier. Like me, she was forced to her knees, handcuffed and held at gunpoint because a license-plate reader had misidentified her car as a stolen vehicle — and no one had bothered to cross-check the information. She endured 20 minutes of agony until the police realized their mistake.

There is a bright spot here in the Bay Area when it comes to law enforcement surveillance oversight: The Oakland Privacy Advocacy Commission is currently the only citizen-led board in the country with real authority and ability to make recommendations. The commission has urged the City Council to prohibit the Oakland Police Department’s further use of license-plate readers for two years, citing both racial profiling and transparency concerns. Hearings are currently underway.

If the Oakland City Council takes the important step of arresting the license-plate reader program, that could open the door for other Bay Area cities and the rest of the state to follow suit. Until the policing paradigm shifts, the line preventing any of us from becoming the next George Floyd, Daunte Wright or Ma’Kiah Bryant remains perilously thin.

I say their names. I’m lucky you won’t have to add mine. Zach Norris is the executive director of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights.