Police union’s suit challenges new policy that limits pretext stops
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Feb. 5, 2025
PRESS CONTACT: Public Relations Officer Jessie Seyfer | pdr-mediarelations@sfgov.org | (628) 271-9800
SAN FRANCISCO — The San Francisco Public Defender’s Office has filed an amicus brief joining the City of San Francisco as it fights a lawsuit brought by the SF Police Officers Association regarding the SFPD’s policy restricting the use of racially-biased traffic stops, also known as pretext stops. The POA is seeking to block the pretext stops policy, and a hearing on the City’s motion to dismiss the suit will take place this morning in San Francisco Superior Court.
“Racially-biased traffic stops disproportionately harm Black and brown communities, and are out of step with San Francisco’s values of racial equality and fairness,” said Brian Cox, manager of the Integrity Unit of the San Francisco Public Defender’s Office. “That is why San Francisco joined several other U.S. cities in enacting a reasonable policy limiting the use of pretext stops. The City Charter empowers the Police Commission to set policy for SFPD and to enact this policy, and the Commission did so after conducting extensive community outreach. The POA had ample time to voice its opinion, and now is desperately trying to keep in place a police practice that is ineffective and harmful.”
The city’s Police Commission voted in February 2024 to enact the pretext traffic stop policy, which restricts police from stopping drivers for traffic infractions as an excuse to detain, question, or search the person or their vehicle. Police officers often use pretext stops to fish for evidence of wrongdoing that has nothing to do with the traffic infraction. Study after study has found that Black drivers are disproportionately stopped and searched in California and nationally. San Francisco is no exception: According to a 2024 San Francisco Police Department data report, Black people are stopped at nearly seven times the rate as white people, searched at almost 11 times more and subjected to use of force at more than 12 times the rate.
Pretextual stops don’t just traumatize and harass Black people; they’re also a particularly ineffective police practice. The evidence shows they are a waste of public tax resources and officers’ time and are akin to a “needle in a haystack” strategy. An analysis of San Francisco traffic stop data confirms that officers rarely—if ever—recover contraband or arrest drivers during pretextual stops yet continue to conduct thousands of them.
“The harm caused by racially-biased traffic stops—aka ‘driving while Black’—is beyond dispute,” said elected San Francisco Public Defender Mano Raju. “Pretextual stops wreak economic, physical, and psychological damage to communities of color here in San Francisco and across the country. I am proud that San Francisco is ending this detrimental practice.”
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