IN HIS 14 years policing the streets of Montgomery County, Maryland, Sergeant Robert Sheehan has witnessed deadly shootings and stopped big-money cannabis deals. But on a sunny afternoon it is the windows of a passing car that raise his suspicion. Maryland law dictates that car windows should be no more than 65% opaque. He stops the black Chevrolet, whose driver is female and black, and by using a special meter he proves that the car breaks that law.
Debate on racial bias in policing tends to be dominated by the shootings of unarmed black men by police officers. Though terrible, such shootings are not common enough to allow the crunchers of big data sets to get to work. Routine traffic stops, on the other hand, occur about 50,000 times a day across America. They are the most common form of contact with the police: one in eight drivers was stopped in 2011.
Until recently these data have mostly been kept under lock and key. But a team of academics from Stanford University’s Open...Continue reading
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