My daughter just bought a house, so, the bad deck on her to-be-sold condo needed an upgrade.
Thanks to good friends, the bad deck got replaced with a much better one.
Most of the construction over, I loaded the bad wood into the back of my truck, placed the wooden pallet from the condo’s new air conditioner atop the stuff and tied it down tight with a bright red and white rope. Very tight with sectional knots, wrap arounds and a spiderweb of crisscrossing rope. Off I drove.
A few minutes later a police cruiser lit me up.
The young officer apologized, noting that his department had received a ‘citizen complaint’ of a silver truck with an unsecured load dropping wood on the highway. I knew I hadn’t lost anything (besides the great rope work I drove with my window open to hear any wood on pavement, and, adjusted my mirror to watch the load). The officer walked around the truck, then asked if he could drop the tailgate. I nodded an okay. He tugged on the rope, took a quick camera pic of the load and thanked me for my cooperation. Then he mentioned that he had to write up a report on every call, so, I showed him my license and all that.
Last week the annual report on traffic stops all about Missouri was released by the state attorney general, with comments from Empower Missouri. The report showed, that “The disparity between white and black drivers who are pulled over in Missouri has increased to the highest level yet…when compared to white motorists, black individuals were 91 percent more likely to be stopped…” — The Missouri Times
Yes, despite most of generation of studying traffic stops, unfairness still increased.
To his credit, Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmidt (elected Treasurer in 2016) wants the situation to improve.
Unfortunately, reality is probably worse than that report states.
When that young officer writes-up his non-report, the stats will add a white guy over age 60 who allowed a consent search of his vehicle. That means the report on 2019 traffic stops will be slightly skewed by my interaction.
And, by what one badge carrying person called “granny stops.”
You see, a law enforcement agency can’t rely on exaggerated ‘calls’ about chunks of wood flying all over the highway. If they know they’re trending high on young black drivers, well, just light up a couple of grandmas each shift. In a state where using a turn signal appears to be a lost skill, creating probable cause is easier than eating a donut.
True, most every cop will deny targeting old white people to offset embarrassing data. Yet pulling over more white folk is easier than changing perceptions, prejudice and tradition. As Empower Missouri’s executive director Jeanette Mott Oxford noted in that story on the report, People of Color are actually less likely to have contraband in their car than white drivers.
That makes sense. If everyone who looks like you gets pulled over by the cops, you expect to get pulled over. If you expect to get pulled over…
All too often, Missouri moves backwards. Witness the legislature’s action, look at police stops. Perhaps that ought to be our new motto: Missouri, the Backward State.
Glenn