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Suspect Citizens: What 20 Million Traffic Stops Tell Us About Policing and Race
Suspect Citizens offers the most comprehensive look to date at the most common form of police-citizen interactions, the routine traffic stop. Throughout the war on crime, police agencies have used traffic stops to search drivers suspected of carrying contraband. From the beginning, police agencies made it clear that very large numbers of police stops would have to occur before an officer might interdict a significant drug shipment. Unstated in that calculation was that many Americans would be subjected to police investigations so that a small number of high-level offenders might be found. The key element in this strategy, which kept it hidden from widespread public scrutiny, was that middle-class white Americans were largely exempt from its consequences. Tracking these police practices down to the officer level, Suspect Citizens documents the extreme rarity of drug busts and reveals sustained and troubling disparities in how racial groups are treated.
292 pages, Paperback
Published July 10, 2018
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May 6, 2018
Disclaimer: ARC via Cambridge University Press and Netgalley in exchange for a fair and honest review.
Recently, during a commute, I overheard a conversation between two men. They were debating stop and frisk policies as well as road checkpoints/spot checks. The first man, Adam let’s call him, said that he didn’t understand why people would be upset about a pat down or a road stop. After all, if you didn’t do anything wrong, you have nothing to fear. His companion, let’s call him Bert, responded with how many times he had been pulled over because he had been a young black male in a car that police believed should be out of his price range. Bert joined the army right after high school, he said, and could afford to drive such vehicles. His fellow soldiers who were white did not get stopped. Adam volleyed back with well, he had been profiled when he had been pulled over, and then was forced to admit that he had been speeding.
Then I got off the train. I’ll leave you to figure out which person was black and which white.
Reading books like Suspect Citizens for people before having the above conversation with anyone.
It should be noted that the work of Baumgarther, Epp, and Shoub focuses on one state, North Carolina, but considering what the presentation and analysis of the data prove that getting pulled over when “driving while black” is really a thing. Not that everyone in the United States didn’t know this, but let’s be honest, odds are you know at least one person who says that it isn’t true. The authors note that part of the reason for this book is so that people who are not black can approach dialogue about police and race with compassion and knowledge.
I find books like this difficult to rate. It is a study. There is a great deal of data being presented to the reader. At times, such use of numbers can be dull, but the writers don’t present information dully. Furthermore, connections are made to wide problems (like low voter turn our). The book isn’t entirely negatively. It also takes the time to go into great detail about the history of the law that triggered the correction of the data as including the full law in an appendix. Attention is given to the history of pulling a car over and the difference between reasons for a driver being pulled over.
There is something information about the pulling over of Hispanic and Native Americans, but the focus is on African Americans.
The book closes with some personal stories of those that have been pulled over. The stories include various outcomes but are very powerful.
Highly recommended.
Recently, during a commute, I overheard a conversation between two men. They were debating stop and frisk policies as well as road checkpoints/spot checks. The first man, Adam let’s call him, said that he didn’t understand why people would be upset about a pat down or a road stop. After all, if you didn’t do anything wrong, you have nothing to fear. His companion, let’s call him Bert, responded with how many times he had been pulled over because he had been a young black male in a car that police believed should be out of his price range. Bert joined the army right after high school, he said, and could afford to drive such vehicles. His fellow soldiers who were white did not get stopped. Adam volleyed back with well, he had been profiled when he had been pulled over, and then was forced to admit that he had been speeding.
Then I got off the train. I’ll leave you to figure out which person was black and which white.
Reading books like Suspect Citizens for people before having the above conversation with anyone.
It should be noted that the work of Baumgarther, Epp, and Shoub focuses on one state, North Carolina, but considering what the presentation and analysis of the data prove that getting pulled over when “driving while black” is really a thing. Not that everyone in the United States didn’t know this, but let’s be honest, odds are you know at least one person who says that it isn’t true. The authors note that part of the reason for this book is so that people who are not black can approach dialogue about police and race with compassion and knowledge.
I find books like this difficult to rate. It is a study. There is a great deal of data being presented to the reader. At times, such use of numbers can be dull, but the writers don’t present information dully. Furthermore, connections are made to wide problems (like low voter turn our). The book isn’t entirely negatively. It also takes the time to go into great detail about the history of the law that triggered the correction of the data as including the full law in an appendix. Attention is given to the history of pulling a car over and the difference between reasons for a driver being pulled over.
There is something information about the pulling over of Hispanic and Native Americans, but the focus is on African Americans.
The book closes with some personal stories of those that have been pulled over. The stories include various outcomes but are very powerful.
Highly recommended.
May 9, 2018
Although, when I first read the description of this book the term “driving while black” immediately took the forefront of my thoughts. I am happy this book is so much more than that and it gives us reasons to think beyond our own assumptions and feelings. It gives us the facts, figures, and amendments from an extreme amount of research.
June 30, 2020
Imagine that you’re an officer of law enforcement, and an upstanding one at that, such as you see yourself, believing that you are an unbiased public servant. Now imagine someone accuses you, and your entire department of racism, of racial profiling en masse. Chances are, you would rush to your own defense and that of your entire force, not because you know each of the other officers to be flawless but because you perceive any such accusations to be largely exaggerated, taken out of context, and harmful to the image of honest policing. You insist that all is well, and you may well be right. But then someone in local government offers to test your claims, to prove, once and for all, that either these claims are unfounded or they are serious enough to warrant some serious changes. They suggest keeping a database of every traffic stop to assess patterns and show results. Eager to be shown innocent, to root out any bad apples in your department, you push for such a database and accept that doing so will indeed put the matter to bed, providing more than enough evidence that your department is not nearly as harmful to the community as such claims have suggested.
The law goes into effect, not just for your department, but for all those in your state, every nook and cranny of law enforcement from local stations to the highway patrol. Every officer logs their traffic stops, whether they like to or not, because it’s the law and they are, in fact, law enforcement. But then no one reports on those findings, not for twenty years, as the accusations of racism go on and on, without anyone following up to see whether the collected data has anything to show. This is the true story of North Carolina, in summary, from 1999 to the present.
Turns out, the data had a lot to show. And it took a few researchers more than 15 years after the data first began pouring in to study it and offer some results. Enter Suspect Citizens, the first and most thorough analysis of traffic stops in more than a hundred years of driving, roads, and public highways. Their coverage is about as thorough, as mathematical, and as damning as it can be without being partisan. Data has that effect. And it only serves to prove, for white readers, what the black community has known, said, and died over for decades, that this is a systemic issue, far beyond the reach of a few bad apples who need to be fired.
Far more than a mere text, this is a reference I intend to come back to many times, many, many times over, in order to cite evidence of things that ought to have been dealt with long ago, and still, now, have a long way to go.
The law goes into effect, not just for your department, but for all those in your state, every nook and cranny of law enforcement from local stations to the highway patrol. Every officer logs their traffic stops, whether they like to or not, because it’s the law and they are, in fact, law enforcement. But then no one reports on those findings, not for twenty years, as the accusations of racism go on and on, without anyone following up to see whether the collected data has anything to show. This is the true story of North Carolina, in summary, from 1999 to the present.
Turns out, the data had a lot to show. And it took a few researchers more than 15 years after the data first began pouring in to study it and offer some results. Enter Suspect Citizens, the first and most thorough analysis of traffic stops in more than a hundred years of driving, roads, and public highways. Their coverage is about as thorough, as mathematical, and as damning as it can be without being partisan. Data has that effect. And it only serves to prove, for white readers, what the black community has known, said, and died over for decades, that this is a systemic issue, far beyond the reach of a few bad apples who need to be fired.
Far more than a mere text, this is a reference I intend to come back to many times, many, many times over, in order to cite evidence of things that ought to have been dealt with long ago, and still, now, have a long way to go.
October 16, 2023
Baumgartner, Epp, and Shoub share their analysis of 20 years of data and seek to “explain the disjuncture between low benefits but high costs of aggressive traffic policing of those who fit police profiles.” (Suspect Citizens,3) They consider traffic stops “the epicenter of police-citizen interactions” and document the distrust that these non-voluntary contacts foster. Terry stops were intended to cause a minor inconvenience to those subject to momentary detention based on suspicion or a search based on probable cause. The Court’s Whren decision only heightened the perceived aggressive police targeting within minority communities.
Baumgartner, Epp, and Shoub remind the reader that when Philando Castile was shot and killed in 2016, he had been pulled over at least forty-six times from the time he learned to drive until his death fourteen years later and that he had had various suspensions of his license and fines for driving without a license and not having valid insurance. (Suspect Citizens, 13). They build on Clear and Frost’s analysis of the “punishment imperative” that led to increasingly punitive crime policies from the 1960s to the 1990s because police are called upon to solve social problems but are only equipped with handcuffs and jail time. (Goffman, 2014 as cited in Suspect Citizens, 27). Tyler, Fagan and Geller found that stop and frisk policing behaviors in New York resulted in 20 percent of all pedestrian encounters falling short of constitutional grounds of legal sufficiency.
Baumgartner, Epp, and Shoub are particularly interested in how SB76 (1999) was passed and the solidarity incentives that it engendered. The intent of the original drafters of SB 76 included not only the collection of data, but its analysis and interpretation (Suspect Citizens, 50). In the data set of 20 million stops, just over 3 percent led to a search, with almost 700,000 drivers searched. The researchers found that the “black proportion of those stopped was almost 10 points higher than in the population – a 42.59 percent increase and that “black populations appear to be consistently over-policed regardless of community size. Minority drivers are subjected to greater surveillance and harsher treatment than white drivers. Young black men are more likely to be searched and arrested than other drivers. While blacks are searched at higher rates, they are less likely to be found with contraband. The authors decry what they term “the fruitless search rate.” When contraband is found, it is almost always found in the singular; one pound, one pint, one ounce, one gallon (Suspect Citizens, 103). Only 12 percent of total searches result in contraband that leads to an arrest. The authors conclude that “the police are unduly suspicious of black motorists and that race is undeniably part of the traffic stop equation.” (Suspect Citizens, 123). They document evidence of racially disparate policing that is systemic and institutional ( not a function of a few “bad apples”)
When the authors turn their attention to an inverse correlation between black political power and racially disparate policing, they add to our understanding of the importance of mobilization and coalition-building. They conclude that “without power, disparities continue with impunity and with little relative attention.” Political power (affected through voting and organization) changes the behavior of the police.
Baumgartner, Epp, and Shoub remind the reader that when Philando Castile was shot and killed in 2016, he had been pulled over at least forty-six times from the time he learned to drive until his death fourteen years later and that he had had various suspensions of his license and fines for driving without a license and not having valid insurance. (Suspect Citizens, 13). They build on Clear and Frost’s analysis of the “punishment imperative” that led to increasingly punitive crime policies from the 1960s to the 1990s because police are called upon to solve social problems but are only equipped with handcuffs and jail time. (Goffman, 2014 as cited in Suspect Citizens, 27). Tyler, Fagan and Geller found that stop and frisk policing behaviors in New York resulted in 20 percent of all pedestrian encounters falling short of constitutional grounds of legal sufficiency.
Baumgartner, Epp, and Shoub are particularly interested in how SB76 (1999) was passed and the solidarity incentives that it engendered. The intent of the original drafters of SB 76 included not only the collection of data, but its analysis and interpretation (Suspect Citizens, 50). In the data set of 20 million stops, just over 3 percent led to a search, with almost 700,000 drivers searched. The researchers found that the “black proportion of those stopped was almost 10 points higher than in the population – a 42.59 percent increase and that “black populations appear to be consistently over-policed regardless of community size. Minority drivers are subjected to greater surveillance and harsher treatment than white drivers. Young black men are more likely to be searched and arrested than other drivers. While blacks are searched at higher rates, they are less likely to be found with contraband. The authors decry what they term “the fruitless search rate.” When contraband is found, it is almost always found in the singular; one pound, one pint, one ounce, one gallon (Suspect Citizens, 103). Only 12 percent of total searches result in contraband that leads to an arrest. The authors conclude that “the police are unduly suspicious of black motorists and that race is undeniably part of the traffic stop equation.” (Suspect Citizens, 123). They document evidence of racially disparate policing that is systemic and institutional ( not a function of a few “bad apples”)
When the authors turn their attention to an inverse correlation between black political power and racially disparate policing, they add to our understanding of the importance of mobilization and coalition-building. They conclude that “without power, disparities continue with impunity and with little relative attention.” Political power (affected through voting and organization) changes the behavior of the police.
August 24, 2020
Exhaustive and Undeniable
Bear in mind before reading this book that it is more scholarly research than a typical book. Perhaps the most complete analysis of the state of policing (at least in North Carolina), virtually every one of the millions of traffic stops in the state occurring from 2002 to 2016 is the sample. For anyone who took stat in high school or college, the sample is in fact the entire population of data obtainable.
Incontrovertible evidence of widespread racial disparities among all of the state’s law enforcement agencies are measured meticulously with statistical analysis that can at times be a little dense to get through, but the numbers don’t lie, and the explanations accompanying the countless graphs and tables make the statistical models easy to understand.
Legislation mandated the collection of this data to find out once and for all whether there is racial bias in policing; the legislation also mandated regular official analysis of the data. Official analysis has never occurred. This book takes the liberty of fulfilling the state’s shirked responsibility to reveal the truth apparent.
Far from a smear job or ACAB, the data is really of the police, by the police, and for the police. The data, collected by officers, would be most useful to the police chiefs and sheriffs who care about having a trusting and engaging community, and are willing to hold their officers accountable for equitable policing and make reforms. The “bad apple” argument is thoroughly disproven by the data. If 30% of the apples are bad, what’s ill is the tree. Police chiefs armed with that knowledge can repair the eroded trust in their communities and pivot from long-standing, ineffective, and alienating policing tactics. If not, this book is available to constituents and policymakers as probable cause for making their own changes.
Bear in mind before reading this book that it is more scholarly research than a typical book. Perhaps the most complete analysis of the state of policing (at least in North Carolina), virtually every one of the millions of traffic stops in the state occurring from 2002 to 2016 is the sample. For anyone who took stat in high school or college, the sample is in fact the entire population of data obtainable.
Incontrovertible evidence of widespread racial disparities among all of the state’s law enforcement agencies are measured meticulously with statistical analysis that can at times be a little dense to get through, but the numbers don’t lie, and the explanations accompanying the countless graphs and tables make the statistical models easy to understand.
Legislation mandated the collection of this data to find out once and for all whether there is racial bias in policing; the legislation also mandated regular official analysis of the data. Official analysis has never occurred. This book takes the liberty of fulfilling the state’s shirked responsibility to reveal the truth apparent.
Far from a smear job or ACAB, the data is really of the police, by the police, and for the police. The data, collected by officers, would be most useful to the police chiefs and sheriffs who care about having a trusting and engaging community, and are willing to hold their officers accountable for equitable policing and make reforms. The “bad apple” argument is thoroughly disproven by the data. If 30% of the apples are bad, what’s ill is the tree. Police chiefs armed with that knowledge can repair the eroded trust in their communities and pivot from long-standing, ineffective, and alienating policing tactics. If not, this book is available to constituents and policymakers as probable cause for making their own changes.
November 8, 2018
In 1999 North Carolina instituted a law that required all State Highway Patrol stops to be categorized by the ethnicity of the driver, the reason for the stop and the outcome. If the stop resulted in a search, the type of search (consent or probably cause) was also noted. Two years later the law was enlarged to include all police stops whether SHP, municipal or sheriff’s. The book highlights the findings in examining the data set and notes the disparate outcomes based on race, with particular focus on regulatory versus enforcement stops, and in the use of consent searches. The authors also note that the hit rate of finding illegal substances (drugs, alcohol, guns or money) was lower on the targeted population than among white drivers on a percentage basis.
Using those findings, the authors have two primary recommendation:
• Concentrate enforcement on safety violations and away from regulatory stops to minimize policing discretion based on hunches, and;
• Either eliminate or implement written consent prior to use of consent searches to minimize police fishing expositions at the expense of stopped motorists.
Lastly, the authors argue that the disparate treatment of people because of race has a negative impact on community engagement and crime in general as it lowers trust in government. While intuitively correct, this part of the argument probably could use more study as only three municipalities are used to make the case and the timeframe employed is relatively short.
With that said, the book is well researched, and the data is presented in a manner that eases comprehension. Well worth the read especially when done in conjunction with “Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America.”
Using those findings, the authors have two primary recommendation:
• Concentrate enforcement on safety violations and away from regulatory stops to minimize policing discretion based on hunches, and;
• Either eliminate or implement written consent prior to use of consent searches to minimize police fishing expositions at the expense of stopped motorists.
Lastly, the authors argue that the disparate treatment of people because of race has a negative impact on community engagement and crime in general as it lowers trust in government. While intuitively correct, this part of the argument probably could use more study as only three municipalities are used to make the case and the timeframe employed is relatively short.
With that said, the book is well researched, and the data is presented in a manner that eases comprehension. Well worth the read especially when done in conjunction with “Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America.”
October 26, 2018
I was glad that I read this book in light of the current state of race relations within our nation. I am thankful that the state of NC gathered the information and am hopeful that other states will follow suit. I appreciate the authors information gathering process and the presentation of the the foregone conclusion that race does impact police behavior. That being said, however, I found the book itself to be overrun with statistics and at times had difficulty understanding the data presented. The introduction and the conclusion of the book concisely presented the information I was looking for. This book would be a great read for criminal justice majors in academia.
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June 21, 2019363.23089 B3485 2018
April 2, 2020
Important data that needs shared... just so much of it. Would have been better served to have included more personal stories. As it is, be prepared to have this read mostly as a PhD master thesis.
July 15, 2021
This was so dense. I really wished I had paid better attention during statistics classes.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews