Welcome to our June newsletter. The legislative session ended, and we want to share that we made good progress beginning to introduce the pretext/secondary stops bill to legislators and the public, and explain its necessity, including meetings with key legislators. We are planning for a multi-year campaign, and we will continue to build the effort to pass this bill. In our discussions about the bill, as you know, we often speak first of the obvious reason for support – these secondary stops are applied discriminately, with Black and brown people being stopped disproportionately more than white people. We are not claiming individual officers intend to do this, but that it is a product of a system that is premised on policies designed without scientific data, and steeped in a history of implicit and institutional bias. And as we have noted before, there are many harms to these stops beyond the societal harm of creating two classes of citizens. Let’s turn to the risk of physical harm arising from a non-safety stop encounter. First, a reminder – as we have noted in the past, and is reflected in our report, studies show there are less racial disparities when stops are for safety reasons – speeding, DWI/DUI, etc. Those are safety stops. Studies show there are greater racial disparities in who gets stopped when the stops are non-safety stops – the types of stops that are based on traffic violations that have not been shown to affect road safety. In June of 2024 the Fines and Fees Justice Center published a brief report summarizing findings about the frequency of use of force in non-safety stops. Drawing on the Center for Policing Equity’s (CPE) analysis of 24 local law enforcement agencies and eight large agencies in California, the report concluded that “(t)he findings confirm that Black drivers experience higher rates of non-safety stops and discretionary searches compared to White* drivers. Additionally, non-safety stops are more likely to involve the use of force than stops for dangerous driving, further illustrating how non-safety stops increase Black drivers’ exposure to police use of force.” In an October 2024 report issued by the CPE titled “Consequences of Compounding Disparities,” the authors concluded, The most immediate and serious negative outcome of these compounding disparities is an increased likelihood that the person stopped will experience police use of force. In all 20 JNAs (Justice Navigator Assessments - CPE reports based on jurisdiction-specific analysis of policing data) in which CPE was able to analyze use of force, Black people had force used against them at disproportionately high rates compared to White people. In 13 of these assessments, CPE was able to produce regression analyses of use of force disparities, allowing us to account for neighborhood crime rates, poverty rates, and demographics. After accounting for these factors, Black people had force used on them between 3.2 and 11.5 times as often as White people. This elevated likelihood of police use of force against Black people is also borne out in decades of academic literature. The evidence keeps piling up – these stops are harmful to the physical, mental, social, and economic health of individuals and communities of color. As we begin to develop action items for the community, we encourage you to use this information, and other information available on our website, to join us and support this bill. If you are interested in joining our next Coalition Zoom meeting on July 16 at 4PM, please contact Jill Paperno at jpaperno@empirejustice.org. Enjoy your summer! Best, Jill | 
