Traffic-Stop Bias Scrutinized In Greensboro, N.C. (just another day being Black)

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Traffic-Stop Bias Scrutinized In Greensboro, N.C.

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

The New York Times examined police in another city, Greensboro, N.C. Reporter Sharon LaFraniere asked what has happened to citizens in recent years who are found to be driving while black. She's on the line. Welcome to the program.

SHARON LAFRANIERE: Thank you.

INSKEEP: I want to mention, you begin this story with an anecdote. Many people have heard anecdotes like this - two black men driving in a car, they're pulled over by police. Nothing much seems to happen, but suddenly, one man is tasered and dragged on the asphalt. Awful, awful story, but it's an anecdote. What did you find when you tried to determine if this anecdote fits some broader pattern?

LAFRANIERE: The most telling sign was that police in Greensboro use their discretion to search black drivers twice as often as white drivers, even though they've consistently found weapons, drugs and other contraband more often on whites. And that pattern was true in North Carolina as a whole and also in Illinois. So that suggests that police are inexplicably more suspicious of black motorists, and it also suggested that they were, to a certain extent, wasting their time by over-searching blacks when they were more likely to find contraband on whites.

INSKEEP: You've said twice as likely to stop and search black drivers than white drivers. And this is based on, what, thousands of cases you looked at.

LAFRANIERE: It's tens of thousands of stops, and it was twice as likely to search. They're more likely to pull over black drivers everywhere. But it's more significant what happens after you're pulled over. If the rate of search is higher, then you would expect that you would have a higher rate of finding contraband, but that didn't prove to be true. And it's not just an inconvenience for black drivers to be over-searched. That means that they're at greater risk of being found, for instance, with small amounts of marijuana and falling through the trapdoor into the criminal justice system. And in Greensboro, five times as many blacks face the charge of possession of less than half an ounce of marijuana, and only that charge, as whites. And four times as many of them were charged with resisting an officer and no other charge.

Ladies and gentlemen. when white people in yahoo comments, msn comments, etc comment sections start spatting off that talk about more blacks commit crimes per their total population. Hit them white folks with the . can i even trust those stats? When everytime i look up i see a situation where whites are by far more wrong than blacks. yet you are over arresting blacks trying to find lent in a nuccas pocket. and giving us a record for that alone. which falsely boosts the numbers of so called black criminals. Which also takes a ton of black people out of the working world. since their are only a select few people that will hire EX CONS or someone with a record.

and for sh.. and giggles make sure to read the comments in this article. White folks deflecting like as usual. can never own up.