We were struck by the sheer beauty of a simple solution to the difficult problem of police traffic stops.
A video.
Not the kind that many officers wear to record interactions with the public. And not the kind that the public uses to do the very same thing.
Such videos have been used increasingly as digital insurance, borne, to a large degree, by the unfortunate spike in fear and mistrust of one group regarding the other.
This new video isn’t that.
In fact, it bears a stronger resemblance to YouTube instructions on what to do when lint lodges in your iPod headphone jack.
Created and used in Raleigh, the video is a straightforward, step-by-step “how-to” on what to do and not to do if you’re pulled over by an officer. A stereo manual for tense encounters.
The idea was inspired by repeated questions in community meetings about traffic stops. It is posted on the Raleigh Police Department’s website and anyone can view it at any time.
The nearly eight-minute recording, hosted by the head of the department’s Internal Affairs Division, includes a simulated stop of a male African American driver by a white officer. Among the advice it dispenses:
• When stopped by an officer, turn down the radio or music you may be playing, so you can hear one another clearly.
• Be aware that the officer must have a legal reason to stop you.
• Put your hands on the steering wheel and ask all of your passengers to make their hands visible.
• Wait until the officer asks you to present your license and registration.
• Let the officer know if you are wearing or storing weapons in your car (in the video, the motorist tells the officer he has a concealed carry permit and is carrying his gun).
• Do not get out of the car unless the officer requests that you do so.
• If the officer writes you a ticket, you have a right to ask him or her to explain why.
• You have a right to allow or refuse an officer’s request to search your car.
• Do not leave the scene until the officer has made clear that it’s all right for you to do so.
Some of the instructions in the video are obvious. Some are not.
Further, the video closes with the number and Web address for Internal Affairs. And it encourages any citizen with a complaint about an officer’s behavior to call.
The recording not only has considerable practical value for the information it shares, but it also can build trust and goodwill even as it builds awareness.
In Greensboro, where the disproportionate frequency of traffic stops in the African American community made the front page of The New York Times last fall and is the subject of an ongoing study and discussion, this is an idea well worth emulating.
To be sure, in itself it’s no cure for deep-seated and complex issues. For instance, there is still a legal roadblock in North Carolina to the general public viewing most of the footage captured by body-worn police cameras.
That needs to change, sooner rather than later.
In the meantime, an instructional video seems an easy, obvious way to avoid misunderstandings, or worse.
And it is the kind of police video that we all can view, right here and now.
— Greensboro News & Record