Ann Arbor police will no longer pull over drivers for these violations

The Ann Arbor Police Department will no longer conduct traffic stops for equipment violations, the interim chief announced Thursday, in an effort to build trust with the city's minority population — just a day after an ordinance of the very same policy was introduced by city council to be written into the city code.

Citing an extensive body of research, the ordinance points to the disparate outcomes of traffic stops that Black, Indigenous and people of color experience — making interactions with police, even for minor infractions, laced with trauma. The ordinance received unanimous support at the city council meeting Tuesday night and is expected to pass when it is voted on at the council's July 6 meeting.

Because of this overwhelming support, Ann Arbor Police Interim Chief Aimee Metzer announced the measure will be implemented immediately. A police department spokesperson declined an interview with the Free Press on Friday, saying the statement from the interim chief "speaks for itself."

"In an effort to continue building trust and providing equitable service to all, our department should be seeking ways to keep the community safe without the appearance of disparate treatment," Metzer said in the statement. "I believe it is the intention of every person within this department to provide fair and impartial service to the City of Ann Arbor. I believe we will be able to continue doing this within these new parameters."

The ordinance has been brewing in one councilmember's brain since before she was elected. Councilmember Cynthia Harrison said the measure, at its core, is intended to limit interactions with police officers. Interactions with police officers that start simple and end with fatal consequences is a story depressingly familiar to Americans, names like Sandra Bland, Tyre Nichols, Philando Castile and — in Michigan — Patrick Lyoya are engrained in the social conscience as just a few examples of traffic stops turned deadly.

"Research clearly demonstrates that routine traffic stops and general traffic enforcement can result in disparate impact for certain members of our community that are Black, indigenous and people of color," Harrison said. "These individuals also are disproportionately impacted by systemic racial injustices at every step of the criminal legal system."

Harrison, who is Black, said the ordinance is meant to help families like hers sleep better at night.

"I am trying to limit harm," she said. "This is harming black and brown communities, and these are antiquated laws."

Under the new measure, Ann Arbor police officers can not stop or detain drivers based on race, religion, gender or socioeconomic status. Officers are also prohibited from stopping drivers based on equipment violation offenses — except in instances where the violation poses an immediate risk of danger — including: tinted windows, cracked or chipped windshield, loud exhaust, object hanging from the rearview mirror, tail light issues (one must be functional), registration plate issues (lighting, placement, sticker location, expiration less than 60 days).

"The City of Ann Arbor recognizes that racial inequity is endemic in our criminal justice system, and is committed to honestly examining, and actively changing, policies and practices that perpetuate systemic racial injustice in our community," the ordinance reads.

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Profiling in disguise

Police officers making what is referred to as pretextual stops to engage in racial profiling is a longstanding problem in the United States, said Mark Fancher, a racial justice project attorney with the ACLU of Michigan. In the late 1990s, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that an officer's intent when stopping drivers is of no legal consequence in a criminal case if the officer is able to point to a legitimate reason for stopping the driver, and so, Fancher said, it has become part of law enforcement culture to stop drivers for minor infractions to disguise their racial profiling practices.

"What (this policy and ordinance) does is it sends a very clear message to the officers, that racial profiling will not be tolerated, that you can't use these (equipment violations) as excuses for stopping people, because according to policy and according to the ordinance, you're not allowed to," he said. "And so that will hopefully have something to do with shaping the culture of the department in the years to come."

When advocates have raised this issue with law enforcement in the past, officials have responded that these traffic stops for minor infractions are important because they contribute to traffic safety even when there's no imminent harm because they help the driver appreciate the potential danger, Fancher said. Despite whatever benefit that may present, these stops continue to be traumatic for people of color.

"This stop is occurring against a backdrop of many brutal kinds of encounters between police and Black people, sometimes resulting in death, and that's present in the minds of people who are stopped. It's going through their heads whenever they're stopped," he said. "That creates a hazard and a danger, not just for the person who has been stopped, but for the officer him- or herself, because if the person is truly afraid that they're not going to survive this stop, they might be inclined to react in a way that causes the officer to react in a way that's very violent."

The risks and trauma associated with traffic stops for Black people and people of color outweigh any potential safety benefits, according to the Urban Institute, and they instead create a tension between community members and those sworn to protect. Traffic stops neither increase trust in police or people's perceived sense of safety among their neighbors.

What both Fancher and Harrison expressed is a hope that Ann Arbor police will instead focus the department's resources on alternatives to community policing and a renewed focus on investigating and preventing crime in neighborhoods.

Ann Arbor, which may be the first city in the state to implement such a policy, could be the one to cause a ripple effect around the state — or at least that's what Harrison hopes.

"If this ordinance is enacted into law and it saves one life — one — my work is is done here."

mmarini@freepress.com

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Ann Arbor police will no longer pull over drivers for these violations