‘Driving while black’: Lawmakers push Buttigieg to deal with racial imbalance in site visitors stops

The Congressional Black Caucus is demanding Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg take instant motion to sort out the racial imbalance between White and Black Americans in terms of site visitors stops.

Lawmakers say the Biden administration must do one thing as “too many Black people have been killed by police in the name of traffic safety.”

“On our nation’s roads and highways, Black motorists have experienced disproportionate scrutiny and excessive force under the guise of traffic enforcement,” the CBC wrote in a letter to Mr. Buttigieg. “While driving laws have been enacted at every level of government to safeguard the public, officers selectively enforce these laws to the detriment of Black drivers.”

Black lawmakers say Mr. Buttigieg ought to undertake an lively overview of federal grants given to states for site visitors enforcement to make sure taxpayer cash shouldn’t be going to “racial profiling.” They additionally need Mr. Buttigieg to put aside cash from President Biden’s $1.2 trillion infrastructure legislation to deal with the racial imbalance.

A 2018 research by the federal authorities’s Bureau of Justice Statistics reveals that African American motorists had been extra more likely to be pulled over for site visitors stops than Hispanics or Whites.

Mapping Police Violence, a progressive advocacy group, notes that 1,235 folks had been killed throughout site visitors stops in 2022 alone. Of that quantity, 276 had been Black, 419 had been White, and 175 had been Hispanic.

CBC lawmakers say the variety of African Americans killed in site visitors stops is disproportionate in comparison with the general variety of Black drivers on the street.

“This disparity is even more alarming when taking into account that Black people are less likely to have access to a vehicle,” the lawmakers wrote. “Driving while Black may not be a real crime codified in law, but it is treated as one throughout the country.”

Addressing the supposed racial imbalance of site visitors stops is a prime precedence for the CBC after the loss of life of Tyre Nichols earlier this yr. Mr. Nichols, a 29-year-old Black man, died in January after being crushed by 5 Black law enforcement officials throughout a site visitors cease in Memphis, Tennesse.

The officers, who had been a part of a plainclothes police unit, had been subsequently fired and are dealing with homicide, kidnapping, and misconduct costs. The incident sparked protests and calls for that Congress overhaul the nation’s police legal guidelines, just like the push for brand new legal guidelines after the killing of George Floyd in May 2020 that resulted within the never-passed George Floyd Justice in Policing Act of 2021.

Mr. Biden has re-upped requires Congress to overtake the nation’s policing legal guidelines in response to stress from the CBC and progressive activists.

“What happened to Tyre in Memphis happens too often,” Mr. Biden stated throughout his State of the Union tackle in February. “We have to do better.”

Overhauling police legal guidelines is probably going a nonstarter for the GOP-controlled House, which has made tackling rising crime a serious subject. Last month, the chamber pushed by means of laws overturning an effort to weaken the legal code of the District of Columbia.