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25 years ago, the US Supreme Court ruled that cops could use any pretext (read: lie) to stop a car to search it & courts would not secondguess their motivations—race or otherwise. Car stops of Black & Brown people exploded. Congress & state legislatures can & must change this.
"An analysis of 7,000 police stops in 2019 in Boston showed that 70% of the people the BPD stopped were Black, though less than a quarter of Boston’s residents are Black." https://www.wgbh.org/news/local-news/2020/06/12/black-people-made-up-70-percent-of-boston-police-stops-department-data-show
"The Stanford Open Policing Project analyzed 200 million records finding that Black drivers are stopped more often than white drivers and that police require less suspicion to search Black and Hispanic drivers than they do to search white drivers." https://openpolicing.stanford.edu/findings/
Not just state electeds. State courts have a role to play too. Last year, the MA Supreme Court recognized “the discriminatory enforcement of traffic laws [is] particularly toxic.” And allowed victims of police abuse to point out discriminatory purpose. https://harvardcrcl.org/the-long-road-to-ending-pretextual-stops/
![Not just state electeds. State courts have a role to play too. Last year, the MA Supreme Court recognized “the discriminatory enforcement of traffic laws [is] particularly toxic.” And allowed victims of police abuse to point out discriminatory purpose. https://harvardcrcl.org/the-long-road-to-ending-pretextual-stops/](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EyxOLW1WQAUnPzo.jpg "Not just state electeds. State courts have a role to play too. Last year, the MA Supreme Court recognized “the discriminatory enforcement of traffic laws [is] particularly toxic.” And allowed victims of police abuse to point out discriminatory purpose. https://harvardcrcl.org/the-long-road-to-ending-pretextual-stops/")
Recall. Weeks ago, as NY was on cusp of finally legalizing marijuana, there was a hold up. Cuomo was *insisting* cops still be able to lie about smelling an "odor" to justify racist car searches. Activists didn't give up. They knew how it drives racist policing. And they won.
The brutal US Supreme Court case that rubberstamped racist car stops--Whren v. US--was unanimous. Written by Scalia. Joined by Justices Stevens, O'Connor, Kennedy, Souter, Thomas, Ginzburg, & Breyer. All "liberal" justices supported this. https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/517/806/
Today, my outrage over people in power refusing to use their power to do right is at a high. Right now, in Oregon, "progressive" Attorney General @EllenRosenblum refuses to end the impact of a racist law designed by the KKK to silence Black jurors. Watch:
