I have been driving around for the past few weeks with a broken taillight. It’s not that I intentionally don’t replace it, but life gets away from me. By the time I get home from work, I have a to-do list a mile long. Replacing the taillight becomes an afterthought. Luckily, I have never been pulled over for a traffic violation.
Unfortunately, many people don’t share my good fortune. According to a Portland Police Bureau report, Portland cops conducted 477,964 traffic stops between July 1, 2020, and June 30, 2021. Of these traffic stops, 21.7% of them were for a non-moving violation, such as illegal parking or overly tinted windows. Driving with expired license plates was the top reason cited.
The same PPB report found that police were more likely to search Black drivers. Another report by the Oregon Criminal Justice Commission found that state troopers were more likely to stop drivers of minority groups including Asian/Pacific Islander, Black, Latino/Hispanic, Middle Eastern and Native American. Despite Oregon’s population being 75.1% White and non-Latino/Hispanic, state troopers conduct traffic stops on minority groups at disparate rates.
This is where the new Oregon Senate bill comes into play. On Feb. 1, SB 1510 A was introduced into the legislative session. A similar bill was proposed in the House in 2021 which would restrict law enforcement from conducting minor traffic violation stops, force law enforcement to identify themselves when conducting a traffic stop and limit the arrests law enforcement would be able to make for nearly 20 misdemeanor crimes. However, that bill didn’t pass.
The current legislation strips down the fundamental purposes of the previous House bill, while becoming more expansive in helping to prevent law enforcement from targeting members of minority groups. The bill requires law enforcement officers to inform citizens that they may deny a search of their car during a traffic stop while maintaining that officers cannot issue tickets for a single broken light.
This bill shows that Oregon legislators recognize law enforcement and the criminal justice system’s flaws when it comes to racially profiling drivers and the overall mistreatment of minority groups. Yet, while I read news articles about this bill, I came across several law enforcement agencies which argue against the bill’s implementation. They fear the roads will become more dangerous.
I will admit, having a broken taillight isn’t ideal and not the safest that my car could be. But the damage of a fender bender or rear-end collision seems minimal compared to the extreme rates of violent, and often deadly, police traffic stops. In the course of a five-year investigation, the New York Times found “police officers have killed more than 400 drivers or passengers who were not wielding a gun or a knife, or under pursuit for a violent crime — a rate of more than one a week.”
Granted this investigation used data from across the country, “a rate of more than one a week” is still a horrifying statistic. These are individuals being mercilessly killed because the police considered them a threat and resorted to an escalation of violence rather than a deescalation.
Simply put, cops kill people for non-violent crimes and minor traffic violations all the time. A guaranteed way to reduce the number of people police in this country kill is to restrict the number of times police and members of the public interact. So send someone a ticket, make sure their plates are updated, but don’t unnecessarily bring a gun into a situation.
I sincerely hope the Senate enacts the new bill, not because I hope to see more fender benders while driving to work, but because of the bill’s potential role in Oregon taking progressive action to fix a continuous, and historically present, injustice.