Last month the Supreme Court of the United States declared that, as far as the police using minor traffic infractions to harass and humiliate people is concerned, it’s open season on white soccer moms—and people of color.
Of course, the Court’s 5-to-4 majority opinion gussied up the language of its ruling in the case of a 32-year-old Texas woman whom a police officer stopped when he saw that neither she nor her two young children, whom she was driving home from soccer practice, were wearing seat belts.
The Court said that the officer’s subsequent arrest and temporary jailing of the woman did not violate the Fourth Amendment’s protecting individuals against unreasonable search and seizure.
The Court surrounded its interpretation with numerous references to historical common-law and American case law precedents before stating that police officers can legally arrest and take to jail anyone for committing a minor traffic infraction—such as not wearing a seat belt—rather than give them a citation for the offense. This can occur even if the person is not otherwise committing a crime nor objects to the officer’s actions.
But Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, writing for the four dissenters on the Court, got it right when she said that the police officer’s action in the case did violate the Fourth Amendment.
Then, O’Connor—in an extraordinary explicit reference to police racial profiling—went further. She warned that granting police officers “such unbounded discretion carries with it grave potential for abuse” and that the Court’s ruling “has potentially serious consequences for the everyday lives of Americans.”
The specific case at hand did not involve racial difference. The woman, Gail Atwater, of Lago Vista, Texas, is white, as is the police officer. Atwater had lived in her town for 16 years and had had only one citation, for changing lanes without a signal, on her driving record. When she was stopped, driving at a speed of 15 miles per hour on a residential street in her neighborhood with no other traffic around, she readily admitted being in the wrong, and offered no resistance whatsoever.
Nonetheless, the policeman was “loud and accusatory from the moment he approached” her car, according to the Supreme Court record. And when Atwater asked him to lower his voice because he was scaring her children, he jabbed his finger at her and said, “You’re going to jail.”
He then proceeded to handcuff her in front of her children and place her in his squad car (without, ironically, securing her seat belt). He would have taken the children to jail as well, but a neighbor who had learned of what was happening from neighborhood children came and took them for safekeeping.
The officer’s subsequent search of the truck discovered two tricycles, a bicycle, a cooler, a bag of charcoal, toys, food and two pairs of children’s shoes. Atwater was placed in a jail cell for an hour, then posted a bond of $310 and was released. She returned to the spot where the officer had stopped her to find the truck had been towed. She did not contest the charge of not wearing a seat belt and paid the fine for the offense: $50.
The suit she and her husband brought against the town, its police chief and the officer who arrested her was dismissed by the federal district court in Austin; but they appealed and it made its way to the Supreme Court.
Justice David H. Souter, writing the majority opinion, stated that although the police officer had subjected Atwater to “gratuitous humiliations” and “pointless indignity,” his behavior toward her did not violate the Fourth Amendment. He went on to declare that while “the arrest and booking were inconvenient and embarrassing to Atwater,” it was doubtful that such incidents are widespread because of “the good sense (and, failing that, the political accountability) of most local lawmakers and law enforcement officials.”
I don’t know of any African American who did not read of the case without immediately understanding its implications across the color line.
To put it bluntly, it applies a veneer of constitutionality to the risk every person of color faces of being harassed on the street or roadway, of being humiliated in public, and more, of finding one’s self in a situation of danger with a police officer.
This is the reality that people of color, particularly those who are African-American and Hispanic-American face every day.
This is not conjecture. Police racial profiling is a fact, and it is widespread. That has been shown by the testimony of innumerable men, women and teens from all stations of life in hearings in such states as New York, California, Indiana, Florida, Maryland, and New Jersey, It has been shown by a growing body of public and private studies—and by several explosive incidents.
The Supreme Court’s ruling in the Atwater case means that police racial profiling will continue and very likely lead to more explosive incidents.
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