We Handed Out Our Own Traffic Tickets To NYPD!

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Friend,

New Yorkers who drive are never excited to receive one of the city’s bright orange traffic tickets. But yesterday, S.T.O.P. issued our very own mock “community tickets” to highlight NYPD’s biased enforcement of obstructed license plate laws. It took less than 10 minutes of walking around 1 Police Plaza to find half a dozen covered, conveniently scratched up, or otherwise obstructed NYPD license plates. We logged the cars with violations and are sending complaints in to NYPD leadership, letting them know NYPD hypocrisy has not gone unnoticed.

But we didn’t call out NYPD’s license plate violations just for fun. The day of action accompanied the release of our latest research report, Obstructed Justice: NYC’s Biased License Plate Enforcement, which details how NYPD targets Black and BIPOC drivers when enforcing obstructed license plate laws. City officials pitch traffic cameras and automated license plate readers as a way to reduce interactions with police, but our report shows they instead put Black drivers at risk of more stops while white drivers cover up their plates with general impunity.

From 2016 to 2019, summonses for obstructed plates more than quadrupled in NYC, correlating with the city’s increase in automated license plate readers. And in that same time, NYPD’s racial enforcement gap of obstructed plates more than doubled. It’s time to put an end to the car surveillance myth, that traffic cameras magically stop discrimination.

In solidarity,
Will Owen
Communications Director

Forward

Newslettercommunications staffFebruary 17, 2023