I just read about the young army officer in Virginia who was assaulted by police. The video was very revealing: https://youtu.be/6GN-u-b9bog. I think there were multiple videos of the same situation.
This is nothing new. I think it has been going on for the past century when the police pull over anyone who is a minority or a teenager. The difference now is that we have complete video records of the event, which allows us to catch the police lying. In this case, the police made a mistake pulling the army officer over, since it had legal temporary tags. So they 'doubled down" by trying to incite a reason for the stop.
The San Diego Union-Tribune today had an article about racial bias in traffic stops and actually use more force with minorities. See this link: http://enewspaper.sandiegouniontribune.com/infinity/article_share.aspx?guid=82f680fc-1bc5-4e52-8d30-525b6e2d7011
It was a very good, thorough article, but it is frightening to all minorities. The LA Times also had an Op-Ed that explained why traffic stops can be deadly to people of color
Personally, I object to "pretense stops" and "consent searches" done by the police. They should be outlawed. Pretense stops make the police look foolish, and make the public upset. Consent searches are not truly voluntary. If the police pull me over and ask to search my car, I can say "no." But the officer will tell me that if I don't allow them to do it, they will request a search warrant and an officer will bring it to him in about an hour. How many people want to sit by the road for an hour? The police know this and will not allow us to enjoy our constitutional rights.
For a decade in the 1920s the Police enjoyed the fun of hasseling people with the ultimate goal of enforcing prohibition. Then after prohibition stopped, they helped write laws against recreational drugs, so they could continue having fun. They made up arguments, and created posters to market their case, which now looks absolutely silly. Of course now we're seeing that legalizing marijuana didn't cause the end of the world. I believe the "war on drugs" is what has contributed to a lot of the pretext stops and consent searches. When the police are able to find a little bit of drugs, they are able to "score" a success, and justify what they are doing --and it feeds a "vicious circle" --back to needing more laws to help them etc.
