Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6 Page 7 Page 8 Page 9 Page 10 Page 11 Page 12 Page 13 Page 14 Page 15 Page 16 Page 17 Page 18 Page 19 Page 20 Page 21 Page 22 Page 23 Page 24 Page 25 Page 26 Page 27 Page 28 Page 29 Page 30 Page 31 Page 32 Page 33 Page 34 Page 35 Page 36 Page 37 Page 38 Page 39 Page 40 Page 41 Page 42 Page 43 Page 44 Page 45 Page 46 Page 47 Page 4826 AMERICAN POLICE BEAT: MAY 2016 Benefits Include:  Competitive retirement  457(b) retirement savings plan  Health, dental, and vision coverage  Accrued vacation and sick days  Employer-paid family leave  Tuition reimbursement program  Employee home purchase program  Language stipend program  Take-home vehicles  11 paid holidays annually  Overtime pay  Experienced: Abbreviated 11 week Academy MinimumRequirementsattimeofapplication:  Be at least 21 years of age  Be a citizen of the United States  Entry Level: 60 college credits, 2 years of active duty military (honorable discharge), with a full service police agency  Experienced: 3 years of prior police experi- ence with a full-service police department in the United States (within one year of application)  Valid driver’s license IT’S A GREAT TIME TO BE MPD. Start your journey today! APPLY at joinmpd.dc.gov joindcpolice @DCPoliceDept OfficialDCPolice We’reseekingentrylevelandexperiencedofficers! Equal Opportunity Employer © 2016 Metropolitan Police Department driving and scofflaws that have, instead, had the effect of ensnaring poor people in a revolving door of debt, courts, collections firms and police. My firm’s study of traffic stop data in Texas found evi- dence that the state wound up targeting low-income residents for heightened scrutiny and penalties. And because black and Latino Texans are dispropor- tionately poor, these policies hit them harder — but be- cause of the way Texas tracks such data, the unfair effects of the laws were hidden by what looked, on the surface, to be bad police work. We looked at traffic stops in one Texas city whose stops did not fit any pattern of racial profiling. But when analyzing the re- sulting penalties from stops, at first glance, those sure looked like racism. (Under the terms of our agreement with the city, we can’t iden- tify it here, but it’s a small city in the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex.) In traffic stops during 2015, black women received citations for violations that levied fines, on average, of $204 more than white women, and $101 more per stop than Hispanic women. What’s more, minority drivers received slightly more violations per stop: Whites on average received 1.4 violations per stop, blacks 1.55 and Hispanics 1.6. These numbers appear to indicate that the city’s police were systematically overcharging minorities. When we looked closer, however, a different picture emerged. Our analysis showed that, by more than two to one, drivers were stopped for speeding. Once they were pulled over, the reasons drivers got additional citations varied by race. Where the most com- mon secondary violation for white drivers was for “expired vehicle registra- tion” (corrected for the cost of re-registration and a $10 fee), the most common sec- ond ticket for black drivers was for having a suspended driver license. “No driver license” was the most frequent second citation for Latino drivers — a common violation in a region with many undocu- mented immigrants. Suspended-license or no- license tickets are expen- sive. Why were so many blacks and Latinos driving on suspended or missing licenses? The city in question is home to several large em- ployers with low-wage but steady and respectable employment. More than 95 percent of the drivers stopped in this city last year lived outside its limits. Low-income workers in a region with no public trans- portation are more likely to have equipment violations on their older cars. When they get a $200 tick- et for a broken headlamp, for example, they’re more likely to be unable to pay. (Accord- ing to Rice University, the 2009 Texas median house- hold income for whites was $59,836, while for blacks it was $35,438, and for His- panics $35,628.) As in many states, unpaid citations here become arrest warrants. When they do, fines basically double, and the driver’s license is often suspended. Next time he’s stopped, the driver is cited for that violation and or driving with a suspended license. More than 1.3 million Texans have suspended licenses. On top of the additional fines from violations like that, a 2003 Texas initiative to reduce drunk driving also levies heavy annual surcharges on anyone whose record includes certain of- fenses and suspensions. This amounts to a poverty tax. But the way Texas tracks stops obscures the broader unfair effects of the law on poor people, and makes it look, instead, like police are the problem. In our subject city, less than 7 percent of the popula- tion is black, but in 2015, 11 percent of the people pulled over there were. This article originally ap- peared in the Washington Post and has been reprinted here with permission. StreetCred CEO and co-founder Nick Selby was sworn in bas a police officer in 2010, and currently serves as an investigator at a police agency in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. His focus is on crimes that lever- age the Internet, such as fraud, organized retail crime, identity theft and child exploitation. Continued from page one Cops get blamed for unequal treatment but they don’t make the laws creating it