Lawmakers and advocates said they have high hopes for a bill that would reduce the number of primary violations that allow police to pull motorists over. Photo by Lance Cpl. Andrew Cortez/U.S. Marine Corps.
Vennieth McCormick said he wasn’t afraid to jump out of planes while in the Army, but he acknowledged there is one thing that has scared him: Being pulled over by police during traffic stops.
The 60-year-old business owner from Baltimore City described several times being stopped by police throughout Maryland, most recently in August 2023 in Baltimore County.
“I’ve never gotten a ticket or warning in any of those stops,” McCormick said in an interview Friday. “I deal with it. There’s nothing I can do about it.”
But lawmakers can do something about it, say advocates, with the reintroduction of a bill that would reduce the number of reasons police have for pulling someone over.
Blacks accounted for 32% of the state population in 2023, but 43% of the nearly 482,300 vehicle traffic stops reported by 131 law enforcement agencies, according to the Governor’s Office of Crime Prevention and Policy’s traffic safety dashboard. Whites made up 57% of the state population but accounted for 39% of all traffic stops that year.
Sen. Charles Sydnor (D-Baltimore County) said one of the main fears he’s heard from law enforcement officials has been that traffic stops are among the most dangerous tasks they face. That’s one of the reasons he plans to introduce a bill — with a companion bill in the House sponsored by Del. N. Scott Phillips (D-Baltimore County) — that would cut back on the number of primary violations that allow police to make a traffic stop.
“The question becomes, if you are talking about public safety, wouldn’t you want your police officers only engaged when there’s a real public safety need?” Sydnor said of the need for his bill. “This put officers out of harm’s way, even our citizens.”
Carroll County Sheriff Jim DeWees disagrees. DeWees, the president of the Maryland Sheriffs’ Association, said officers who stop drivers for violations such as an unregistered vehicle or faulty equipment aren’t about whether a person is Black or white, but it’s simply a matter of right and wrong.
“What people need to understand it is not a constitutional right to be able to drive a vehicle on state or local roads. It’s a privilege that the state of Maryland grants you,” DeWees said.
“If you don’t do those things, then the police are going to stop and hold you accountable by writing orders and doing certain things to make sure you do comply with the social contract in being able to drive your vehicle and have the privilege to drive a vehicle on a roadway,” he said.
DeWees said in an interview Tuesday that the sheriff’s association plans to “try and stop and this ridiculous legislation.”
Currently, state law lists a number of “primary violations” that allow an officer to pull a driver over, as well as a number of secondary violations that the driver can be cited for — but only after being pulled over for another, primary violation. The proposal by Sydnor and Phillips would downgrade a number of current primary violations to secondary status, with an eye toward reducing the number of reasons for a nonsafety-related traffic stop.
Sydnor said the bill is still being drafted, but violations that would be downgraded to secondary status under the proposal include:
- Driving an unregistered vehicle or driving with expired registration that have been expired for at least three months;
- Driving without a functional headlight, brake lights, or taillights;
- Driving without mirrors, or obstructed or damaged mirrors;
- Window tint;
- Failure to illuminate a license plate;
- Driving in a dedicated bus-only lane;
- Excessive noise;
- Failure to signal a turn, lane change, stop, or start (due to equipment not functioning or otherwise); and
- Littering on roadways.
‘What’s the purpose?’
Sydnor, who said he and his wife have been pulled over by police while driving — “It’s not a good feeling” — credited the Maryland Office of the Public Defender for helping to educate the public about his proposal.
Public Defender Natasha Dartigue held a “Safer Traffic Stops for All” virtual briefing last week. Documents presented highlighted fewer nonsafety traffic stops would let officers redirect resources to focus on “dangerous driving and serious safety concerns,” but also “decrease racial disparities in traffic enforcement.”
The Governor’s Office of Crime Prevention and Policy’s traffic safety dashboard show the racial disparity in traffic stops was similar in 2022 to 2023: Of the 505,603 traffic stops reported by 128 law enforcement agencies in 2022, Blacks still accounted for 43% of all stops, versus 40% of white drivers.
The dashboard also showed that equipment- and registration-related violations accounted for nearly 44% of traffic stops, the two highest violations reported, in both 2022 and 2023.
The public defender’s office noted two states – Virginia and Oregon – approved statewide changes to limit police traffic stops for minor offenses.
GET THE MORNING HEADLINES.
A few hours after Dartigue’s Nov. 19 virtual briefing, her office hosted a discussion on the proposed legislation at Catonsville Library attended by Sydnor, Baltimore County Democratic Dels. Sheila Ruth and Aletheia McCaskill and a few dozen other residents.
The event also featured a panel that included Tyrone Powers, a former FBI agent and Maryland state trooper who now runs a consulting company. Powers said one way to make change is for people of color to work in law enforcement or the legal profession.
“We get angry with the [criminal justice] system and we say, ‘I don’t want to be involved with that,’” Powers said. “But you have to be in these positions to [improve it].”
McCormick, who was also part of the panel, said he supports the legislation. But he said in a later interview that any change i the law needs to include the possibility of punitive action for officers who violate it. For example, he said if an officer receives a certain number of written infractions for not adhering to the law, then that person should be fired.
“If you don’t put any meat or teeth behind it, then what’s the purpose?” he said.