Millions of drivers, and many more TV viewers, are likely to have heard a traffic stop open with the following question: “Do you know why I pulled you over?” But drivers in California will no longer hear the question, as police officers in the state will be prevented from asking it.
That’s as a result of a bill signed into law by Gavin Newsom in the fall of 2022 that will take effect in January 2024. The new rule requires officers to tell drivers why they are being pulled over before asking any other questions.
The law was written, in part, to reduce the practice of “pretextual stops,” in which police pull over a vehicle for something minor, hoping to search it for drugs or contraband. The California Public Defenders Association told the San Francisco Chronicle earlier this year that the measure will “increase transparency and public confidence in law enforcement.”
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Part of the state’s efforts to fight racial discrimination, data from between 2018 and 2022 shows that Black people in San Francisco were 4.4 times more likely than white people to be pulled over, and 10.5 times more likely to be the target of pretext stops, even though they were statistically less likely to be found with contraband in their vehicles.
However, police organizations in the state have opposed the measure, saying that the bill is too strict. As written, the law requires that cops alert a driver to the reason for a stop in all cases except those in which they “reasonably believe that withholding the reason for the stop is necessary to protect life or property from imminent threat.”
In addition to those requirements, the law will also require officers to monitor compliance and to include reports with the reasoning for all stops that are conducted, reports The Hill. The law will also protect pedestrians from being asked why they are being stopped before an officer discloses their reasoning.
