NC traffic stops drop, but Black drivers still stopped at twice rate of white drivers

Brandon Smith knows the drill.

Get out of the car. Put your hands where I can see them or put your hands on top of your head. Move over here. Sit down on the ground. Don’t move.

“It’s very precise movements you have to make,” said Smith, a 27-year-old Black resident of Raleigh.

Smith says he has been stopped by law enforcement agencies at least 10 times. Court records show he was found responsible for one infraction in North Carolina: having improper equipment in 2017.

Twice officers said they smelled marijuana after stopping him for alleged traffic violations and tried to search his car despite there not being any marijuana in it, Smith said. The first time, he consented to a search. The second time, he was stopped while driving a company vehicle and did not give consent, he said.

“I was scared. I was nervous. Frightened,” Smith said. It was embarrassing when people he knew drove past, he said.

“They think you committed a crime, the way they treat you, the way they make you sit there and put your hands on your head,” he said.

Smith is one of many Black drivers who think they get stopped more than they should.

A just-released study from the N.C. Criminal Justice Analysis Center shows a racial disparity in traffic stops remains even as total stops have declined. The center, part of the Governor’s Crime Commission, works to collect, analyze and interpret data to help inform criminal justice policy.

Black drivers get stopped at more than twice the rate of white drivers, the study shows. People of other races, and those whose race wasn’t recorded, were stopped at 1.5 times the rate of white drivers.

North Carolina requires law enforcement agencies to collect traffic-stop data. The data include the date, time, location, agency making the stop, purpose of the stop, actions taken, encounters of force, injuries, officer ID, searches and contraband, as well as the gender, race, age and ethnicity of both the driver and passengers.

The study collected data from 86% of law enforcement agencies in North Carolina.

Total NC traffic stops dropping

After rising for a few years, the overall number of traffic stops in the state dropped between 2009 and 2019 even as the number of drivers on the road increased, the study states.

In 2010, there were 1.7 million traffic stops. The number gradually fell to 1.25 million in 2019. The study does not say what caused the drop.

The number of times white drivers were stopped declined from over 1 million in 2010 to about 706,000 in 2019. The times Black drivers were stopped declined from about 543,000 in 2010 to roughly 451,000 in 2019.

The rate of white people being stopped between 2009 and 2019 decreased by 28%, and the rate of Black people being stopped decreased by 15%.

While the study shows more white drivers have been stopped overall, Black drivers have been stopped at a much higher rate. In 2010, roughly 34 Black drivers out of 100 were stopped. That same year, almost 20 out of 100 white drivers were stopped.

Since then, both rates have fallen. But the rate of black drivers being stopped is roughly twice that of white drivers. in 2019, roughly 25 out of 100 Black drivers were stopped compared to 12 out of 100 white drivers.

The total rate of traffic stops per 100 people was roughly 23 out of 100 in 2010 and about 15 out of every 100 in 2019.

About 40% of the traffic stops in North Carolina were for speed limit violations and 29% of stops were for vehicle regulatory and equipment violations.

White drivers were stopped for speeding more frequently. Black drivers were pulled over for vehicle regulatory violations more frequently.

Raleigh and Durham

Open Data Policing, a project of the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, shows similar trends in Raleigh in Durham. The project uses data from 2002 to mid-2019.

In Raleigh, Black people are just over 28% of the population but accounted for more than 23,000 traffic stops by the Raleigh Police Department in 2018. White people are more than 50% of the population but accounted for almost 14,000 traffic stops, the data shows.

The data shows a rising number of traffic stops in Raleigh until 2010, after which traffic stops decline.

The data also shows Black drivers making up a growing percentage of those being stopped. In 2007, Black drivers accounted for 42% of the city’s traffic stops. By 2018, they made up 56% of the stops.

In Durham, Black people are 37% of the population, white people 54% and Hispanic people 13.7%, according to Census data from 2019.

The Durham Police Department stopped 7,716 Black drivers, 3,266 white drivers and 1,297 Hispanic drivers in 2018, the data shows.

Traffic stops dropped since 2008, but Black drivers were still stopped at a much higher rate than white or Hispanic drivers.

In 2018, Black drivers accounted for 61% of traffic stops by Durham police, white drivers 26% and Hispanic drivers 10%.

Smith says he and his fiance have talked about how to prepare their daughter, who’s almost 2, for a traffic stop when she is old enough to drive.

“Kind of scary to think about my daughter will have to go off into a world like that,” he said.

This story was originally published August 5, 2020 at 5:50 AM.