Racial Issues concerning Traffic Stops by Patrol Officers

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Racial Issues concerning Traffic Stops by Patrol Officers
The war on racism has been fought for many years with persons such as Martin Luther King jr. being the pioneers in the fight. This issue has continued to be a tough battle since the police have continued to carry on the vice leaving many frustrated and aggrieved. Many traffic stops have been made by state and local law enforcement officers who harass motorists on racial lines (Ramirez, p.34; Council on Crime and Justice, 2003 p.3). In the US majority of minorities are stopped by officers on the roadways. According to Muffler, p.116 in the book “Racial profiling: issues, data, and analyses” police officers would have substantially more likely to record the race of a driver during motorists stops if the driver was a majority than if the driver was a white and the rate and/or severity of traffic violations committed by minorities would have to be substantially greater than those committed by whites (Rice, White, & Robin, p.81).
There are areas where traffic stops are mainly made; they include; INS inspectors at the land border crossings, border patrol agents at the major highways (Massey, & Denton, p.72). For the traffic stops much legislation has been proposed however few have been passed. Fifteen states such as Arkansas, California, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, North Carolina, and Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, and Virginia as of October 1999 had taken some actions to address the issues of racial policing of motorists. Particularly North Carolina and Connecticut have enacted legislations that ensure the collection and compilation of traffic stops data on motorists; this has also introduced in other eleven states.
To be able to establish if there is racism in the traffic stops data that needs to be collected include; driver’s race or ethnicity, age, gender, reason for stop, location for stop, search conducted, legal basis of search, obtain consent, results of stop, any law broken (Free, p.69). For any police to conduct a racial profiling is very inappropriate and illegal; this is very primitive to say the least in the 21st century (O'Reilly, p.104). Racial profiling can be extended in several ways such as firstly, when a police officer’s actions are seen to be initiated by race, ethnicity, gender, or nationality; instead of basing the decisions on the deeds of the individual or what the police consider the individual to have done to break the law. Secondly, is where police practice racial bias by deciding on issues of concern and how to handle them when there are people of different races. Thirdly a police officer may use race as a factor in making a traffic stop, also a police officers may use ethnicity or race as reason to suspect certain individuals and thus subject them to unfair stops, arrests, and/or questioning.
Racial traffic stops remain illegal bu...