Death by Traffic Stop

One of the realities of the United States that both fascinates and repels countries around the world is the American obsession with guns. Even though the United States evolved from a nation that was 94% rural when the Second Amendment was passed – to enable militia to keep their guns in peacetime in an era of flintlocks and muskets – that firearm love affair, now with increasingly efficient semiautomatic military-grade firearms, continues into a modern America that is almost 90% urban. This ubiquitous right to “bear arms” was never interpreted as part of the Second Amendment until a 2008, 5-4 Supreme Court decision (Heller vs DC). People outside the US remain mostly aghast at the fact that we have more guns than people including tens of millions of semiautomatic weapons.

But what is particularly repugnant to foreigners is a combination of mass shootings, many at schools and colleges, and so many that arise from mere traffic stop, usually involving fatalities of people of color. Until the recent advent of smartphone and officer-carriers body and police car cameras, these blue-on-Black/Brown killings were simply stories carried on the back pages of local newspapers. The gun deaths of police officers were also buried in those back pages. The international press, not surprisingly, often reported how America cherished guns over the lives of its children.

The recent alleged second-degree murder of Tyre Nichols at the hands of the Memphis, Tennessee police department after a traffic stop (see above crime scene photo) has grabbed headlines all over the world. A special tactical police force – here the Scorpion unit (an acronym for “Street Crimes Operation to Restore Peace in Our Neighborhoods”) created last year – was responsible for Nichols’ death. Scorpion was immediately disbanded, but such aggressive crime-stopping units proliferate in urban police forces all over the United States. Officers assigned to this Memphis force were given a couple of days training and then turned loose on the public.

It seems odd that in a nation with so many firearms, average municipal and state police and sheriff officers are among the least trained law enforcement specialists in the developed world. See my recent Untrained, Unprepared and Unleashed? blog for the nasty details. And increasingly, red state legislatures (with Supreme Court approval) are making the right to carry a concealed weapon without a special license a fundamental right. Louisiana is the latest state to join this parade. It is a most volatile mix.

That African American Tyre Nichols’ purported killers were Black cops did not seem to change the equation. Because of this growing international revulsion to America’s gun culture, I thought it would be useful to look at a European perspective on this recent event. The February 1st BBC.com article – Why do so many police traffic stops turn deadly? – by Bernd DeBusmann, Jr: “The death of Mr Nichols in Memphis has highlighted how one of the most common interactions the public has with police - the traffic stop - can turn deadly… Last year, at least 86 people were killed by police in interactions that began as traffic stops. In 2021 it was 117, according to the Mapping Police Violence database… That figure includes people of all races but experts say that black Americans are disproportionately stopped by officers in cities across the country…

“Since 2017, more than 800 people have been killed after being pulled over in the US, according to statistics from the Mapping Police Violence database… Last year, traffic stops led to roughly 7% of all [US] police killings nationwide… Larry James, general counsel of the National Fraternal Order of Police, told the BBC that the dangers of a stop - when an officer doesn't know who, or what, is in a vehicle - mean they must exercise caution… ‘There have been situations where officers have been shot, just flat out killed or seriously injured, in traffic stops. That's the bottom line. So they're extremely cautious,’ he said.” In fairness to our nation’s police, police murders have also soared 59% over that last several years as well. Guns.

There is a price to be paid for an over-armed cadre of undertrained law enforcement officers assigned to “protect and serve” in a nation with a massive proliferation of firearms, many legally carried as concealed weapons. There was a common refrain from specialized anti-crime units around the United States: that overly aggressive response to Mr. Nichols’ traffic stop is not representative of these specialized police units as a whole. But the statistics cited above suggest it is hardly an uncommon reality. The BBC report also suggests police are often rewarded for behavior that creates these harsh results:

“Ayesha Bell Hardaway, a law professor and co-director of the Social Justice Institute at Case Western Reserve University in Ohio, said that a lot of police training for traffic stops is ‘antiquated’… ‘[Officers] are trained, basically, that a traffic stop is the most dangerous thing an officer might engage in on any particular day,’ she said… Traffic stops, Ms Bell Hardaway explained, also pose a danger to those being pulled over, with statistics showing that civilians are more likely than law enforcement officers to die in traffic stops. .. ‘As dangerous as police officers are taught it is for them, we know that civilians are killed at a far greater rate by police officers than in reverse,’ she said.

“Police departments also give officers incentives to pull people over, seeing traffic stops as a way to fill city coffers or using them as a metric for officers to be evaluated… Jennifer Hicks, a former Utah police officer, recalled that in the departments in which she worked, individual traffic stop statistics were put up on a board for all to see, with officers rewarded for giving out tickets… ‘I remember that very clearly, as I was always at the bottom, because I hated giving out tickets,’ she said… ‘It was always pointed out in front of everyone that I had the lowest citation numbers.’

“That's beginning to change. Several jurisdictions across the country have announced prohibitions on quotas among other changes to their traffic stop policies… Last March, Philadelphia began implementing new rules mandating that drivers can no longer be stopped for minor infractions, such as missing brake lights or items hanging from the rear view mirror.

“A similar move was announced in Los Angeles, where - in response to complaints that traffic stops were disproportionately affecting black and Latino drivers - the LAPD ordered that officers not conduct stops unless they have reason to believe a more serious crime has taken place… In cases when they do stop someone, officers must record the interaction with their body cameras… A Los Angeles Times analysis of LAPD statistics, published in November, found that the policy led to a drastic reduction - over 40% - in stops for minor violations.

“Still, it's ‘too early’ to tell whether such policies have a significant impact on the outcome of traffic stops, said Ed Obayashi, a California-based police officer and training expert who helps departments across the US carry out use-of-force investigations… ‘There's no guarantee that it's going to result in less incidents of violence between police and individuals,’ he said.” But when you dig every so slightly beneath the surface of these killings, you find one common denominator: fear of being shot… on both sides. Too many guns with too many under-trained officers.

I’m Peter Dekom, and while more practical police pursuit policies and better “de-escalation” training should make a difference, we all know that this carnage will not seriously reduce until the United States finds an overall path to commonsense gun control.