A video recording of a Minneapolis police officer killing George Floyd by kneeling on his neck set off this summer’s record-breaking protests against police violence and racist policing. But as Jamila Michener outlined here at TMC in June, Floyd’s killing was just the spark to ignite outrage against broader systemic racial injustice.
For example, U.S. law enforcement disproportionately police people who are Black, Latino and/or poor. Individuals identifying with these groups bear the long-term negative consequences of constant surveillance. What’s more, they are a regular source of revenue for cash-strapped governments, especially in fees and fines from traffic violations.
The Floyd protests are the broadest in U.S. history — and are spreading to white, small-town America
Our research questions how discriminatory policing interacts with increasing government needs and demands for revenue. To better understand this relationship, we examined traffic stops in Missouri. Overall, Black drivers are disproportionately stopped and cited in the state. But when local governments experience budget shortfalls, which increase pressure to generate revenue, officers increasingly ticket White drivers.
Here’s what we already know about racial disparities in traffic stops
State and local governments rely so much on traffic revenue that even the pandemic-related drop in driving did not reduce Missouri state troopers’ ticketing for traffic violations. Many U.S. residents know that traffic tickets help prop up state and local budgets. Drivers have been warned of — or caught by — “speed traps,” cited for violating state vehicle codes for broken taillights or stopped for temporarily shifting a few inches over a lane divider.
George Floyd’s killing was just the spark. Here’s what really made the protests explode.
Both news media and scholars have investigated this use of fees and fines. Sociologist Alexes Harris and law professor Jeffrey Fagan and economist Elliott Ash compared traffic stop revenue to a form of latent taxation.
The Department of Justice’s 2015 investigation of Ferguson