According to a Stanford Institute project called “The Open Policing Project” which looked at over 100 million police traffic stops.

“Police pull over more than 50,000 drivers on a typical day, more than 20 million motorists every year.”

Does that mean 50,000 people are breaking the law everyday?  Is there an epidemic of lawbreakers on our streets?  

Of course not, so why are police stopping 20 million motorists every year?

Police across the country don’t just ticket millions of Americans every year, they’re also questioning them.

Unfortunately the “Open Policing Project” doesn’t mention how many passengers are stopped and questioned by police every year.

Most people travel with someone, so it’s fair to say police are stopping and questioning approximately 40 million motorists every year.

Police are also using at least fifteen different types of checkpoints to stop and question motorists.

In what country would it be acceptable to stop and question millions of people?  Certainly not America the land of the free, right?

Police take millions of dollars from motorists every year

For years, police have had to meet ticket quotas during their shifts. A Google search for “do police have quotas” returned over 5 million hits and a Google search for “police ticket quotas 2017” returned close to 6 million hits.

In 2015, a Boston Globe story said “Traffic ticket quotas are real.”

“Officers were told to issue more revenue-generating tickets. Office Tom Delaney said that officers who didn’t operate under the system wouldn’t get overtime assignments and other perks.”

It’s the same story across the country.

Police departments send text messages to officers on the road reminding them to reach their quotas during their shifts.  In 2015, an NYPD officer claimed he was texted about not meeting ticket quotas and denied a night off. And a recent story in the Advocate revealed that police deleted every text message to keep the public from reading their texts.

Police admit they have quotas

In 2017, the NYPD agreed to pay $56.5 million to people written bogus tickets by police.

If the public knew how much money is being made off of motorists each year from taxes, fines and arrests there would be a public outcry.

How often police stop motorists is a secret

The Open Policing Project points out that police don’t want the public to know how many people are stopped each year.

“Some states don’t collect demographics of who police pull over. States that do collect the information don’t always release the data.”

Why do we know, how many people are arrested for drunk driving each year but have no data about how many motorists have been ticketed by police?

“The most common police interaction — the traffic stop — has not been tracked, at least not in any systematic way.”

It’s 2017 and we still don’t know how many motorists are being stopped and ticketed in America! 

States like California and Texas have stopped 24-32 million motorists from 2009-2015. While states like Rhode Island and Montana have stopped approximately 500,000-825,000 motorists.

For all the talk of open policing and transparency, this project proves that it’s all just talk.

Secrecy is a cops number one priority.

Colored drivers are two to three times more likely to be searched 

The Open Policing Project found that police require less suspicion to search black and Hispanic drivers than whites and they’re two or three times more likely to be searched.

After accounting for age, gender, and location, we find that officers ticket, search, and arrest black and Hispanic drivers more often than whites… when pulled over for speeding, black drivers are 20% more likely to get a ticket (rather than a warning) than white drivers, and Hispanic drivers are 30% more likely to be ticketed than white drivers. Black and Hispanic motorists are about twice as likely to be searched compared to white drivers.”

“When we applied the threshold test to our traffic stop data, we find police require less suspicion to search black and Hispanic drivers than whites. This double standard is evidence of discrimination,” the findings noted.

This is the first study, that shows police are stopping and questioning thousands of motorists every day and millions of passengers every year.

The next time you’re stopped by the police, exercise your right not to speak. To travel freely in America is not a privilege, it is one of our constitutional rights.