Dear Supporters of our Police Reform Project, On October 6, Jill Paperno, Empire Justice Center’s Chief Strategy Officer and an attorney in the Civil Rights Practice Group, was featured as one of several resources interviewed by Justin Sondel, a reporter for the Buffalo News, in an article titled “Stop and frisk. Pretext stops. Controversial practice known by many names is back in spotlight.” Although the impetus for the article was the July 10, 2024 stop of Dae’von Roberts, the reporter took a deep dive into practice and problems surrounding pretext stops. What did he find? As he noted, The type of traffic stop that led to that incident is at the heart of a lawsuit against the city and police department over what the suit claims is the use of vehicular stops to target, detain and search members of Buffalo’s Black and Latino community. Commonly referred to as pretextual or pretext stops, they are loosely defined as incidents when a police officer stops a vehicle in order to conduct a speculative criminal investigation unrelated to the motorist’s driving, and not for the purpose of enforcing the traffic code. Police departments have often been accused of misusing the practice. Professor Stephen Rushin of Loyola Law School was interviewed about changes in law in Washington, and the changes in who got stopped following the changes. Sondel noted Rushin “has published one of the few academic articles attempting to assess how the reforms are working in practice to date. Rushin and his colleagues performed research in Washington State, which essentially outlawed and then rescinded laws restricting the use of pretextual stops. ‘We found that the relegalization was associated with a statistically significant increase in the stopping of drivers of color, particularly Black and Hispanic drivers,’ Rushin said. ‘But, that’s one jurisdiction, one single change in law, and I think the broader empirical literature is still yet to be written on that topic.’ Rushin’s findings were supported by another professor interviewed for the article, David Rudovsky, a professor at University of Pennsylvania Law School. What I can say is the concerns that people have in Buffalo are legitimate,” Rudovsky said. “We’ve seen it. I’ve seen it in Philadelphia. I’ve seen it around the country in these kinds of cases that often police will use very minor violations to stop people. And mainly African Americans, hugely disproportionate. That’s an issue. Empire Justice Center’s work on police reform, and specifically pretext or secondary stops, is part of movement across the country to end the racially disparate stops that too often lead to Black and brown drivers getting stopped far more often than their white counterparts. If you want to learn more about the work we are doing, or join our efforts to pass legislation, please join us for the next meeting of the Safe and Fair Traffic Enforcement Coalition on October 16, 2024 at 4:00 p.m. Email Jill at jpaperno@empirejustice.org for details and the link to the meeting. Thank you for your continued interest and support. Katie Blum, Esq. Jill Paperno, Esq. | 
