The premise of Bill 2-24, introduced by Councilmember Will Jawando, is flawed. He states that consent searches of motor vehicles during traffic stops disproportionately affect Black and Brown residents.
Data from the Maryland race-based traffic stop dashboard shows, however, that there are no real disparities in consent searches by race. 13-14% of all races consent except whites, where it’s 21%.
Montgomery County Maryland officers are required to go above and beyond in informing drivers that they have the right to refuse consent. The power is held by the driver, not by the officer, as Mr. Jawando falsely asserts. If the driver feels they were treated unfairly or unprofessionally, the plethora of civilian “accountability” boards can view footage from body-worn cameras and in-car cameras and then refute or substantiate the complaint. That’s their purpose. Let the system do its job.
Someone who is stopped for a traffic violation and tells the officer, “You should know that I am a Montgomery County councilmember,” as Mr. Jawando did, has no standing to be on a soapbox about power dynamics between police and residents. Any perceived power imbalance is a natural part of any interaction between someone of authority and someone without authority. The problem comes when it is misused, as Mr. Jawando misused his.
Effective Law Enforcement for All (ELEFA) recently completed a review of the Montgomery County Police Department. Among their findings:
- ELEFA reviewed 50 random BWC traffic stop incidents over a three-year period. ELEFA believes that overall MCPD police officers handle traffic stops professionally. In the majority of audited traffic stops, officers’ communications with the violators were professional and courteous.
- Factors such as previous violations for the same offense triggered an issuance of a citation. But if the violator had no points in the system, was courteous, and had an honest discussion about the violation, no citation was issued even when warranted for moving violations.
- Officers must provide a written warning or citations on traffic stops — which provides better documentation and data — as opposed to providing a business card to the violator. It has been reported that some officers are reluctant to make stops due to the new policy and their concern that violators might feel they are harassing them with written citations – even though they are warnings. The adverse effect and unintended consequence to this new policy change is that officers may be choosing not to perform minor traffic violation stops.
Mr. Jawando often cites a statistic of the percentage of stops that yield illegal firearms and drugs. That is a red herring that has no place in the conversation. If one out of however many stops succeeds in confiscating a gun that was destined for a murder, it is, of course, worth it. Except to Mr. Jawando.
Mr. Jawando, and the other councilmembers and anti-police activists who support him, would have one believe that Montgomery County police are systemically biased. An article in The Washington Informer in 2020 stated, “The fatal shooting of Finan H. Behre by a Montgomery County Police officer has ignited efforts by SSJC [Silver Spring Justice Coalition] and Behre’s family to ensure consequences for his death and eradicate what they say is the latest in a long string of Black murders at the hands of racist police.” Except that is not true in Montgomery County.
The truth, according to the Washington Post police shooting database, is that since 2017, there have been 10 fatal police shootings in the county. In every case but one, the individual was armed. The one who wasn’t armed attacked the officer. Seven of the 10 were Black. This is not the picture that Mr. Jawando and his supporters paint.
Another of Mr. Jawando’s oft-cited statistics is that the number of people of color stopped by police should reflect the percentage of people of color in the county. He conveniently fails to mention that the percentage of homicide victims does not reflect census either. Of the 29 homicides in Montgomery County last year, 20 were Black men and 7 were Hispanic men. If Mr. Jawando has paid any attention to THAT inequity, I haven’t seen mention of it.
Any division that might exist between police and the community is largely because of Mr. Jawando’s efforts to sow that division and undermine police. His premise that there is a lack of trust between police and the public speaks more to his own bias against police than anything else.
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