588 Routine Car Stops Reveal an Ugly Truth

When a police officer stops a Black driver, the first 45 words said by that officer hold important clues about how their encounter is likely to go, according to a new study.

Car stops that result in a search, handcuffing, or arrest are nearly three times more likely to begin with the police officer issuing a command, such as "Keep your hands on the wheel" or "Turn the car off."

Eighty-one of these stops ultimately involved searches, handcuffings, or arrests. That kind of outcome was less likely when a police officer's first words provided a reason for the stop.

"There are stark racial differences in who is stopped and who's not," says Tracey Meares, a Yale Law professor and a founding director of the Justice Collaboratory at Yale Law School, who points out that in the one-month period covered by this study, the city's police officers did 588 stops of Black drivers and only 262 stops of white drivers, despite Black drivers being less than 15% of the population. Read the full story in NPR.