By Carla K. Johnson and Steve Karnowski
MINNEAPOLIS — When Philando Castile saw the flashing lights in his rearview mirror, it wasn’t unusual. He had been pulled over at least 52 times in recent years in and around the Twin Cities and given citations for minor offenses including speeding, driving without a muffler and not wearing a seat belt.
He was assessed at least $6,588 in fines and fees, although more than half of the total 86 violations were dismissed, court records show.
Was Castile an especially bad driver or just unlucky? Or was he targeted by officers who single out black motorists like him for such stops, as several of his family members have alleged?
I seriously doubt Philando Castile was such an unusually bad driver that his driving drew the police’s attention 52 Times. Much more likely he was pulled over 52 times for Driving While Black. Imagine how oppressive and dangerous that had to have been.
...in 2001, the Legislature asked for a racial profiling study and it fell to Kearney, then at the Institute on Race & Poverty at the University of Minnesota Law School, to conduct it. His study, using information supplied voluntarily by 65 law enforcement jurisdictions in the state, found a strong likelihood that racial and ethnic bias played a role in traffic stop policies and practices. Overall, officers stopped minority drivers at greater rates than whites and searched them at greater rates, but found contraband in those searches at lower rates than whites.
The analysis found the pattern was more pronounced in suburban areas. In Fridley, New Hope, Plymouth, Sauk Rapids and Savage combined, blacks were stopped about 310 percent more often than expected.
Racial profiling during traffic stops in MN
What they call investigatory stops, those are stops where the pretext is that there is something wrong with the vehicle, and there is something wrong with the vehicle so they stop them because they can, but they are really targeting people,” said Charles Samuelson from the American Civil Liberties Union of Minnesota.
When it comes to the investigatory stops, statistics show people of color are pulled over at a much higher rate than white people. Racial profile happens most in the suburbs around the Twin Cities.
“It has a corrosive effect on the community,” said Walter Katz, the Independent Police Auditor of San Jose, California. “If you have a system, a law enforcement agency whose mindset is basically try and stop everyone and we will figure out which of those people may have guns or something legal in their possession or a warrant, then you are treating everybody as a suspect.”
Perhaps Philando Castile was lucky to have survived being stopped by police over 50 times. Then his luck ran out when Officer Jeronimo Yanez came up to his driver’s window. Black Americans shouldn’t have to face a potentially deadly interactions with police on such a regular basis because of the color of their skin.