Civil rights groups challenge traffic stops they say target people of color

Four civil rights groups are advocating for the Iowa Supreme Court to crack down on what it says are racially discriminatory and illegal traffic stops.

A legal brief filed by the groups is signed by the American Civil Liberties Union of Iowa, the Iowa-Nebraska NAACP, the League of United Latin American Citizens and 1,000 Kids for Iowa.

The groups are supporting an appeal from Scottize Danyelle Brown of Waterloo, who was convicted of operating while intoxicated and driving with a suspended license. She was pulled over for turning as a light turned red and for having one of her two rear license plate lights out, according to court records. Brown is seeking to have her conviction reversed.

The news release states that the police officer who stopped Brown testified in district court that he believed her vehicle was registered to someone believed to be linked to gang activity and said he wanted to "poke around and see what's up."

Brown argues the stop was unlawful and pretextual — in the ACLU's words in a news release, when "an officer uses a minor violation, true or fabricated, like a burnt-out license plate or improper turn, to stop a driver often on the basis of skin color."

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Rita Bettis, the legal director for the ACLU of Iowa, said Brown's case illustrates how people of color in Iowa fear they will be unfairly targeted by police based on their race.

"This stomach-turning experience of getting stopped for essentially 'driving while black' or 'driving while brown' is really an all too common one in our state," Bettis said.

Citing the Iowa Constitution, the brief argues that these traffic stops violate personal liberty and constitute unreasonable seizures "because they allow police to stop drivers when the true reason for the stop is not supported by reasonable suspicion or probable cause."

Pretextual stops have been upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court, in the 1996 decision Whren v. United States. But Bettis said the years since that decision have shown "the real-world consequences and the practical fallout and harm that has resulted from that decision."

"What we’re asking is that the Iowa Supreme Court provide greater protection under our state constitution than the U.S. Supreme Court has unfortunately found under the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution," Bettis said.

The civil rights groups are urging the Iowa Supreme Court to develop a more stringent test to determine whether a traffic stop is pretextual, taking into account the totality of the circumstances, including an officer's motive.

Such a test could include such factors as whether the traffic violation at issue is one that raises serious enough safety concerns that it would make sense for a reasonable officer to stop the vehicle, the brief argues.

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The brief cites traffic stop data from several cities in Iowa showing that:

People of color made up 10 percent of drivers, but 19 percent of traffic stops, in Iowa City in a 2014 study.

African Americans in Linn County are 25 percent more likely than white people to be cited rather than warned when stopped for a traffic violation.

African Americans in Scott County are nearly three times as likely to be stopped as white drivers and almost twice as likely to be arrested if stopped.

In Waterloo, African Americans make up 15.3 percent of the population but account for 37.8 percent of traffic stops.

Iowa City Police Chief Jody Matherly said he discourages his officers from making pretextual traffic stops or going on a "fishing expedition," which he said isn't productive and damages the community's trust in the police department.

"We rely on physical descriptors and a combination of factors to develop probable cause and reasonable suspicion for traffic stops," he said.

Matherly said his department has taken steps to cut down on disproportionate minority contact in traffic stops and build back trust.

One way of doing that is through a program called BULBS, or Building Unity Linking Businesses for Safety. If police officers stop someone for a broken tail light or other equipment violation, they can give the driver a voucher to have the car fixed at a participating local business, with the police department paying the cost.

"Now not only will you not get stopped by us again because you’ve fixed your tail light, but we’ve paid to get it fixed," Matherly said.

Matherly said police have issued 38 vouchers through the program, which began in October.

A 2015 study of traffic stops in Iowa City by Chris Barnum, a criminal justice professor at St. Ambrose University in Davenport, found racial disparities trending downward compared to the 2014 study, also conducted by Barnum.

But Barnum sounded a note of caution about other studies that use census population data as a benchmark to measure disproportionality in traffic stops.

"Depending on where the stops are made really determines to a great extent whether there’s disproportionality," he said.

If police are are patrolling a high-crime neighborhood that also has a higher percentage of people of color, traffic stop numbers will appear more disproportionate compared with the racial demographics of the entire city, he said.

While Barnum has found disproportionality in traffic stops in several Iowa cities, he said he's not convinced there's systemic bias. He said he's generally found police departments eager to identify their problems and solve them.

"It’s my belief that although racial disparities — and probably I’ll even go as far as to say bias — does exist within police departments, it’s not systemic," he said.

Even if Iowa City's numbers didn't show any racial disproportionality, Matherly said, it would be important for police to address any perceptions of bias to maintain the trust of the whole community.

"In many areas of fairness and equality, even if there’s a perception that the law enforcement are not doing things fairly and consistently, then we need to address that perception," he said.

Brown's appeal is still in its early stages.

Reach Stephen Gruber-Miller at 319-887-5407 or sgrubermil@press-citizen.com. Follow him on Twitter: @sgrubermiller.