CITIES TRY TO TURN THE TIDE ON POLICE TRAFFIC STOPS
New York Times, April 15, 2022, by David D. Kirkpatrick, Steve Eder, and Kim Barker
“Never before have government officials, policymakers or prosecutors tried to limit how police officers use traffic stops in their investigatory role — in fact, historically, making these stops was encouraged,” said Sarah A. Seo, a law professor at Columbia University who studies traffic stops. “These new policies may be turning the tide.”
monsters: cars, which are killing us and the planet
Mother Jones, December 27, 2021, by Tim Murphy
Traffic enforcement, the historian Sarah Seo argued in her book Policing the Open Road, is arguably the glue for modern policing; it provides the legal structure, arbitrariness, and incentives, that make cops omnipresent.
the demand for money behind many police traffic stops
New York Times, October 31, 2021, by Mike McIntire and Michael H. Keller
“Because everybody on the road violates traffic laws, that allows the police, who are also in charge of criminal law enforcement, to investigate crime without meeting any of the standards required for criminal investigation,” said Sarah A. Seo, a law professor at Columbia University and the author of a history of traffic enforcement.
As early as the 1910s, Dr. Seo said, departments found that taking on traffic enforcement meant they could hire officers and expand their investigative powers. By 1920, traffic fines helped the Los Angeles police traffic division become “practically self-supporting,” according to an annual report at the time.
“We think that modern police departments and their power came from the need to fight crime,” Dr. Seo said. “Actually, it started with traffic enforcement.”
this fort bend narcotics unit overwhelmingly stops, searches hispanics. is it racial profiling?
Houston Chronicle, July 31, 2020, by Eric Dexheimer and St. John Barned-Smith
“A traffic stop is not a voluntary encounter,” said Sarah Seo, a Columbia Law School professor and author of ‘Policing the Open Road,’ which traces the history of vehicles and the 4th Amendment. “So in a situation where a person is not free to leave, and then is asked, ‘Can I search your car”? how do people know they’re able to say no?”
police pulled over two black men for having an air freshener in their car. a court ruled the stop was legitimate.
BuzzFeed News, June 18, 2020, by Zoe Tillman
“It gives individual officers a lot of discretion to decide which drivers to pull over,” Seo said of Wednesday’s decision. “And that opens the door not only for arbitrary decisions for deciding who to pull over, but discriminatory reasons for deciding who to pull over. It definitely contributes to the racial disparities that we see in who gets stopped by race.”
Public outrage, legislation follow calls to police about black people
Washington Post, May 27, 2020, by Maria Sacchetti, Shayna Jacobs, and Abigail Hauslohner
In addition to putting a reported suspect’s life at risk, a call to the police can create a host of other dangers that are difficult to monitor, Seo said.
Court Decision Doesn’t Guarantee Radical Changes to Fines and Property Seizures
Route Fifty, February 20, 2019, by Bill Lucia
“The only thing that the court held was that the excessive fines clause is incorporated,” she said. “It didn't define what ‘excessive’ is,” Seo added. “That's going to be litigated, and it’ll take time.”
Bullets across the border: Trial of US Border Patrol agent raises legal, foreign-policy issues
The Christian Science Monitor, March 14, 2018, by Lourdes Medrano
The potential implications for foreign policy and national security may be one reason the high court avoided the question of constitutional rights for people in other countries, according to Ms. Seo of the University of Iowa law school.
A Brief History of the Traffic Stop (Or How the Car Created the Police State)
Observer, July 26, 2016, by Josh Keefe
“Cars are completely transformative,” said Sarah Seo, an associate professor at Iowa Law School and author of a recent paper on automobiles and policing in the Yale Law Journal. “The massive growth of police departments really happens after the mass production of automobiles,” she continued, “not just because of fear of crime, but also because cars were really destructive.”
The Senate’s Only Black Republican Opens Up About Being Mistreated by Cops
The Atlantic, July 15, 2016, by Conor Friedersdorf
Subsequently, a reader turned me onto a fascinating Yale Law Journal article by Sarah Seo, who traces the bygone decision, shortly after the rise of the automobile, to charge police officers with enforcing traffic laws in addition to criminal statutes, rather than creating a separate entity to discharge that discrete task. The result: Over time, cops gained enormous discretionary power to stop and search individuals.