In response to Ferguson, two KU professors say it’s time to end ‘investigatory stops’ by police

Writing in response to the events in Ferguson, Mo., Charles Epp and Steven Maynard-Moody, professors at Kansas University’s School of Public Affairs and Administration, had a recent opinion piece published by The Washington Post, in which they called for an end to “investigatory stops” by police as a way to reduce tensions between law authorities and minorities.

“Unlike traffic-safety stops, in which the purpose is to sanction safety violations, investigatory stops are intended to check whether a person is engaged in serious criminal activity. Our interviews revealed that while whites are quite familiar with traffic-safety stops, they have little experience with investigatory stops. But half of all stops reported by blacks were investigatory.

“Investigatory stops can be tense, because people view them as unfair and fear what the officer may do next. They wonder: If an officer can handcuff me for an hour when all I did was drive through a white neighborhood, what is to prevent him from doing far worse?” the two KU professors wrote.

Epp and Maynard-Moody are co-authors with Donald Haider-Markel, chairman of KU’s Political Science Department, of the book “Pulled Over: How Police Stops Define Race and Citizenship.”

In The Washington Post piece, Epp and Maynard-Moody said many blacks view the police shooting in Ferguson, Mo., of Michael Brown, an unarmed 18-year-old African-American, as something that could have happened to them.

“African Americans experience not only more police stops than whites but also a completely different kind of stop. For many African Americans, the stop of Michael Brown on a Ferguson street was all too reminiscent of ones they have experienced themselves — stops they feared could spiral into violence. Many black men may now be saying, `There but for the grace of God go I.’ ”

Some police departments have argued that investigatory stops are necessary to fight crime but Epp and Maynard-Moody write that the practice comes at a high price.

“The problem is not police stops — it is investigatory stops. These stops poison blacks’ attitudes toward the police — and toward the law itself. They undermine police effectiveness and turn the citizens of a democracy into the controlled — and resentful –subjects of a security state. It’s time to end them,” they wrote.
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