Brooklyn Center safety committee proposes banning traffic stops for minor infractions

Brooklyn Center police would no longer be able to pull over motorists driving with expired tabs or minor equipment violations under recommendations from a committee formed in response to recent police killings of two Black men.

City officials established the Community Safety and Violence Prevention Implementation Committee in the wake of fatal police shootings of Daunte Wright and Kobe Dimock-Heisler. Wright was killed during a 2021 traffic stop, and Dimock-Heisler at home in 2019.

The City Council last year passed a series of reforms to remake the Police Department after the shootings, including forming the committee, which has been working for months on recommendations for changing police policies.

"The main thing is to keep us from experiencing any more incidents of death or harm," committee member John Solomon said during a presentation to the council Tuesday. "We hope you recognize the importance of this moving forward."

The council voted unanimously to accept the report, but took no other action.

Calls to new Police Chief Kellace McDaniel seeking comment on the proposal had not been returned as of Wednesday afternoon.

Under the proposal, officers would no longer be able to stop drivers solely for violations such as having inoperative windshield wipers, a cracked windshield, excessive window tinting, a noisy muffler, an improperly displayed or expired license plate or permit sticker, or for having broken or improperly used headlights, tail lights or turn signals.

The committee presented data that showed nationally 67% of people stopped for those violations are people of color.

Police would still be able to stop drivers for dangerous activities, such as reckless driving and speeding, or if a vehicle's equipment poses a dangerous condition.

In Brooklyn Center, overall traffic stops have fallen from just under 10,000 in 2010 to just under 2,500 in 2021. City data the committee presented showed that of those stops, only 17% resulted in a citation, with a majority of those for license and insurance violations.

"It is important we focus on bigger stuff," such as violent crime, Solomon said. "Excessive stops for minor equipment issues erode community trust in law enforcement."

Changes similar to those being proposed in Brooklyn Center have been enacted in Minneapolis, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Seattle, Lansing, Mich., and the state of Virginia.

Julia Gibson Reeves, a faith leader with Praise Chapel International, urged the council to accept and enact the recommendations.

"The sooner we get this done, the better," she said Tuesday. "We don't need to sit through meetings and work sessions to figure this out. Now is the time to take action and save lives."

The committee also recommended that police no longer be able to ask drivers to consent to a vehicle search during a traffic stop unless there is probable cause and evidence that the motorist was linked to a crime.

"There are times when people think they can't say no," said Council Member April Graves, who is running for mayor.

Such searches are harmful because they undermine trust in police, committee members said, and there is no evidence the searches make the community safer. They pointed to an article in Police1 magazine that found "limited effectiveness in identifying evidence of illegal firearms or other serious crimes" during consent searches.

The committee also presented an article from an October 2021 issue of the Journal of Ethnicity in Criminal Justice that showed Black male drivers were twice as likely as other drivers to have an officer request to search them during a stop for a moving violation.

Council Member Kris Lawrence-Anderson said she hopes to get more feedback from the public, police and legal experts before the council formally votes on the plan.

"I know your heart is in this," she said.

Clarification: A previous version of this story imdicated that Kobe Dimock-Heisler was unarmed. Although Dimock-Heisler did not have a weapon in his hand when officers first arrived on scene, he later grabbed a knife that had been hidden under a couch cushion and tried to stab a police officer and that was what ultimately led to the deadly force being used.