Naturally, the left is against “pretext stops.” A high-level OPD officer defines pretext stops as a term “mainly [used] by the anti-police groups suggesting that cops stop folks for a low level ‘minor’ reason as a ruse to stop someone who[m] police are investigating for something else.” In addition to no license plate, these reasons can include expired registration tags, a driver blowing through a stop sign, or a car with broken tail lights.
Some anti-police activists allege that pretext stops are racist, because more Black and Brown people are stopped by cops, compared to White people. For example, the American Civil Liberties Union claims that “African Americans are 3.3 times as likely to be searched during a traffic stop as [W]hites,” which is why the organization “calls on the Oakland Police Department to ban consent searches and pretext stops that likely contribute to the discriminatory results.” (I need not repeat the common sense argument, which I’ve made many times before, that the racial statistics of who is arrested are meaningless; if group X commits crime at a higher rate than Group Y, obviously more members of Group X are going to have encounters with the police.)
The issue of pretext stops has raged in Oakland and through the Bay Area as the crime wave intensifies. The high and increasing occurrence of “ram raiding,” in which thieves crash stolen cars into stores in order to pilfer them, has brought pretext stops under fierce examination.
A former deputy chief in the S.F. Police Department points out that a pretext stop can be justified “when a driver is behaving suspiciously.” For example, “they’re driving 15 miles an hour on a street with a 35 mph speed limit, wearing a mask, swiveling their head, and reaching under their seat.” Clearly, these behaviors are not illegal but, added together, may constitute “a bunch of small clues [that] amount to a reasonable suspicion.” Progressive legislators in California tried this year to pass a bill, SB50, that “would have prohibited officers from stopping drivers for a problem with a single headlight or brake light, the lack of a registration tag or front license plate, or defects in bumper equipment.” The bill died in the Democratic-controlled State Legislature after the California District Attorneys Association strongly condemned it, arguing that passage “jeopardizes public safety, undermines the rule of law, and reduces accountability for low level infractions.” Not surprisingly, Pamela Price was one of the few California DAs to support SB50.
In San Francisco, former DA Chesa Boudin likewise tried to ban pretext stops, which he called “DWB” (driving while Black). Cops who do pretext stops, he alleged, have“conscious or unconscious bias, and they can profile individuals based on perceived race, ethnicity or other social categories.” That lenient attitude didn’t sit well with voters, who recalled Boudin in 2022.
Another opponent of pretext stops is, predictably, Cat Brooks. She calls them “racist and violent…a gross waste of resources with little beneficial returns.” Brooks was particularly upset by the case of Erik Salgado, who was shot and killed by CHP officers after “driving a stolen car with a gun and running from police” in 2020. Price’s predecessor, Nancy O’Malley, refused to file charges against the cops, assessing that they’d acted appropriately. But in June, after Price took over the DA’s office, Salgado’s family demanded that Price “reopen the case and put the officers involved on trial.”
Salgado’s family evidently believes that Price’s antipathy toward police will motivate her to restore murder charges against the exonerated officers. (CHP has already given $7 million to Salgado’s family.)
Look, nobody knows better what suspicious behavior is than cops. The time to crush the rattlesnake is when it’s coiled and hissing, before it strikes. I’m just saying it’s time to unshackle the police and let them do the job that only they are trained to do. If a driver isn’t doing anything illegal, beyond having, say, a broken tail light, then he has nothing to fear. This is why, for those of us who worry about crime, every time we hear a Cat Brooks or ACLU type criticizing pretext stops, we think they’re either out of their minds, or they actually like crime, for some weird reason. In fact, I’m not going to call them “pretext stops” anymore. I’m calling them what they are: stops for cause.
We don’t know if Price will reopen the Salgado case. If she does, she can expect a ton of criticism, at a time when she’s fighting for her job due to the Recall. We’ll be watching this closely. If Price does refile charges, the outrage level in Alameda County against her—which is already high—will explode, and her recall will be virtually guaranteed.
Steve Heimoff