Brooklyn Center, Minn. — Community members gathered outside the Brooklyn Center police station Tuesday to protest a decision that took many by surprise.
The city council rejected a police reform proposal Monday night to end low-level traffic stops.
Katie Wright helped lead the protesters. Her son, Daunte, was shot and killed in 2021 during a traffic stop.
Wright called the council “some sorry people” Monday. She says she feels bamboozled by their rejection of the reform she’s helped work on for years.
“They’re afraid of change,” Wright said.
The traffic stop policy has been adopted in several U.S. cities, like Philadelphia, Los Angeles and Seattle, as well as Minneapolis and St. Paul.
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Typically, the policies don’t allow police to pull drivers over for violations like air fresheners hanging from rearview mirrors, cracked windshields, broken taillights or expired tabs.
“These kinds of stops are not working,” said Daniel Bodah with the Vera Institute of Justice, a non-profit that studies traffic stops.
Bodah has looked at the impacts of the policy in Ramsey County as part of his work.
After St. Paul, Roseville, Maplewood and St. Anthony Village Police Departments had cut out low-level stops for a year, total traffic stops plummeted 86%.
Stops of Black drivers dropped 66%, the most of any race.
The number of seized guns did fall slightly, but researchers found it was such a rare occurrence to begin with that the decrease likely wouldn’t affect crime rates.
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“These stops are essentially fishing expeditions,” Bodah said. “There seems to be no connection between enforcing minor traffic infractions and finding those kinds of contraband.”
Wright says she’s not giving up on making the new policy a reality in Brooklyn Center.
Councilmember Kris Lawrence-Anderson, who voted against the policy, told WCCO she looked at the research to help her decide, but wouldn’t elaborate.
The other two ‘no’ votes, councilmembers Teneshia Kragness and Dan Jerzak, didn’t respond Tuesday for requests for comment.
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