Driving While Black: New Book Chronicles 20 Million Traffic Stops

Employing the theme “War On Crime”, law enforcement agencies throughout the U.S. continue to initiate traffic stops on drivers for no other reason than a suspicion based on appearance. This persistent trend has eroded trust in communities while subjecting many drivers to dangerous encounters with police.

Emerging in the late 90s, a concept known as “driving while black” began garnering attention nationwide. Amidst this development, in 1999 North Carolina became the first state to codify laws around the mandatory collection of traffic data stops. This advancement of this groundbreaking legislation is largely attributed to the tireless efforts of black legislators within the state.

In their book “Suspect Citizens,” political scientists Frank Baumgartner, Derek Epp and Kelsey Shoub, Suspect Citizens provide an in-depth look at the most pervasive form of police-citizen engagement, the routine traffic stop. Using the aforementioned North Carolina database, these author/researchers unearthed troves of information highlighting key trends on why drivers were pulled over, the outcomes of these stops and demographic information on the drivers.

Data tied to an anonymous identification number for each officer was used to assess the time of each stop as well as the jurisdiction of the police…