The New York State Assembly says their role should be much less than they have been.

Earlier this week, following a floor debate that was often emotional and which brought the sponsor of A.7599 to the verge of tears, the state Assembly passed legislation that still allows police officers to cite drivers for having dangling objects or window obstructions, but only if the driver is pulled over for another violation. The bill was passed by a 96-44 with Assemblymen Andrew Goodell, R-Jamestown, and Joe Giglio, R-Gowanda, voting against the legislation. Companion legislation (S.7353) sponsored by Sen. Tim Kennedy, D-Buffalo, passed the Senate Transportation Committee by a 10-1 vote in February but has not made it to the full Senate for a vote.

Prohibitions on hanging items from a rear view mirror — like air fresheners or hanging placards like a handicapped parking placard — are common in many states, including Pennsylvania. Virginia passed a law in 2021 similar to A.7599 that requires police to have another justification to stop a vehicle other than dangling objects.

Thursday’s discussion in the state Assembly was a microcosm of the national debate, with Republicans generally arguing that such “pretext” stops are necessary for police to enforce state gun and drug laws and Democrats speaking out against Black or Brown drivers being pulled over for no reason based on “pretext” violations.

Assemblyman Edward Gibbs, D-New York City, speaks on the Assembly floor Thursday.

“I do understand my colleagues’ concerns on the other side of the aisle regarding any changes in laws that could not allow officers to do what they think their job is,” said Crystal Peoples-Stokes, D-Buffalo and Assembly majority leader.

But also understand the perspective from which this bill is intended. No one should come to work to do their job through a racial lens. And all too often in America and in New York state that happens. This is an effort to try to string that down just a little bit and if it’s effective it will be beneficial for everybody, including those people — hundreds of thousands of them — who have a tag hanging from their rear view mirror because they’re handicapped.”

THE ARGUMENT FOR PRETEXT STOPS

Pretext stops are named because they allow police officers to use minor traffic infractions a reason to investigate drivers for other, potentially more serious, crimes. The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled in 1996 in Whren v. United States that pretext stops are constitutional as long as police officers identify an actual violation of the law regardless of their motivation for the stop.

Assemblyman Joe Angelino, a former member and chief of the Norwich Police Department in Central New York. The Norwich Republican recounted incidents of pretext stops that took dangerous criminals off the streets, such as Joel Rifkin, who was pulled over for driving a car without license plates. Perhaps the most famous pretextual stop took place in the aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing when Timothy McVeigh was pulled over for not having a license plate on his vehicle. Angelino himself was part of a traffic stop and noticed a flashlight that looked out of place on the back seat of the vehicle that tipped the longtime officer off to the presence of stolen items in the trunk of the car.

Assemblywoman Taylor Darling, D-Hempstead, speaks on behalf of her legislation to make obstructed view police stops a secondary reason for police to pull over a driver.

That doesn’t mean Angelino is beholden to the necessity of minor violations being part of state law.

“I understand the background,” Angelino said. “What I don’t understand is the feeling that some people have toward police. I don’t know what happens in other areas. In the rural area I live in, people run to the police for help. I don’t know of anyone being afraid of the police unless they were doing something wrong. Specifically on this, I want to remind people these are minor violations. And there are plenty of minor violations in the vehicle and traffic law regarding dirt on license plate, lamps and detail stickers. If we don’t want the minor violations, then this is the place. We’ll write them out of the law and they won’t matter. That’s shapening in other areas. I do want to remind everyone here that minor traffic violations and police officers pulling over violators is real police work.”

Assemblyman Andrew Goodell, R-Jamestown, said the pretext stops present few consequences for drivers other than fines since there are no penalty points associated with them. During the floor debate, Goodell discussed the bill with Assemblywoman Taylor Darling, D-Hempstead, who said there are times when having an obstructed view from the windshield or rear window of a vehicle can create public safety issues such as not seeing a pedestrian on the road, which is why the obstructed view law was originally approved. The most important reason to have minor infractions, Goodell said, is to give officers an opportunity to take illegal guns or drugs off the streets.

“So a vehicle that is stopped for a minor traffic infraction, the officer walks up and sees a gun,” Goodell said. “He can make an arrest. And we’ve talked extensively about the problem of gun violence here. This bill leaves it open if the stop was based on obstructed windshield, that arrest may not hold up under the Exclusionary Rule. So many times an officer will walk up and look in, as my colleague noted, and see stolen property in the car or drugs or realize there is an outstanding warrant for the driver.”

THE ARGUMENT AGAINST PRETEXT STOPS

Assemblywoman Crystal Peoples-Stokes, D-Buffalo and Assembly majority leader, is pictured during Thursday’s debate on pretext stops.

Assemblywoman Taylor Darling, D-Hempstead, referenced in her legislative justification for A.7599 research published by The Stanford Open Policing Project in 2020. The project analyzed nearly 100 million traffic stops carried out across the United States and found black drivers were about 20% more often than white drivers relative to their share of the residential population. The study also found that once stopped, Black drivers were searched about one-and-a-half to two times as often as white drivers.

Assemblyman Edward Gibbs, D-New York City, spoke on behalf of A.7599 and noted he has been pulled over several times for minor violations such as driving 5 or 10 miles over the speed limit or switching lanes without signaling.

“I want to share with my colleagues who perhaps don’t live in the police district to bear with me for a few seconds and imagine living in a district where the police force is predominantly Black and Brown and you’re pulled over simply because you’re white and because you’ve switched lanes without signaling,” Gibbs said. “Now you’re accosted at your window by an officer with his hand on a revolver while banging on your window with a flashlight. It’s very intimidating just for switching lanes without signaling. Now you have a bill that addresses being pulled over because you have something hanging over your rearview mirror, another justification to stop. I want you to imaging the fear we go through driving and being pulled over, seeing the siren, wondering if today is your day, will I survive this time? Will the officer be kind? Will the officer be mindful that you have a family at home waiting for you? These are the things that we do every day and see and experience in our district.”

AREA OF AGREEMENT

Brad Haywood, executive director of Justice Forward Virginia, an advocacy organization for criminal justice reform, told the Associated Press last year that, as a public defender, he’s represented dozens of people who have been pulled over for having items dangling from their rearview mirrors, including air fresheners and rosary beads.

Assemblyman Joe Angelino, R-Norwich, is pictured speaking about the use of pretext stops on the state Assembly floor.

“I do not remember in my career as a defense attorney representing someone stopped for an obstructed view who was white,” he said. “It’s just been Black and Brown people.”

That inequity is one area on which Republicans and Democrats on the Assembly floor found agreement on Thursday.

“In my county I understand there is concern in other areas of the state that these minor traffic stops may be motivated by an improper motive,” Goodell said. “I understand and I appreciate that and I urge every police department to ensure that the law is applied fairly and equitably to everyone. But we most assuredly do not want to eliminate the ability of our police to arrest someone for illegal firearms that are seen in a routine traffic stop even for a minor equipment violation or to confiscate drugs they may see in a routine traffic stop or to respond to any other crime that occurs following a routine traffic stop such as this. So while this bill on its face is somewhat innocuous, the ramifications could be very serious. I do appreciate and support the sponsors’ desire to ensure that all of our laws, including minor traffic infractions, are enforced in a fair and equitable manner.”

Angelino, the longtime former police officer who rose through the ranks to become his department’s police chief, had a similar sentiment.

“It breaks my heart that people would be afraid of a police officer,” Angelino said.

Darling is an American and British citizen who was born in Brooklyn, whose father served in the military and mother worked in education. Darling herself attended Spelman College at the age of 16 before transferring to Hofstra University to become an industrial organizational psychologist.

“I would love for everyone in New York state and the United States to live in a place where, when they see law enforcement, they feel safe and they’re grateful and they know they’re there to help,” Darling said. “I really hate this conversation and feeling that it’s us versus them as we work hard to again create these protections for communities that have been targeted. I just want to share, hearing my colleagues’ experiences, all my life I wanted to have a beautiful Black son. I have him now. And to have to start differences between how I have to raise him and how he has to encounter the world and to teach him how the world will encounter him versus my daughters, I pray I have the strength to handle that. I pray my child is not at the hand of someone because they feel like he shouldn’t be here or that people who look like him are criminals. And yes, we’re not going to be able to erase that feeling in our approach because it’s in the fabric of our country but it’s our responsibility, especially here in New York state, to do all that we can to ensure that everyone here feels like they belong and they feel safe and that’s why we do this every day. I’m so grateful to be in a body where many of us understand that.”