Are Young Black Men Traveling Together Targeted for Traffic Stops?

This study explores whether police officers are especially likely to stop young Black males traveling in parties of two or more. Our analysis is guided by social psychological theory and research suggesting that racial stereotypes about criminality are applied with greater intensity to Black people encountered in groups. Investigatory stop data for Philadelphia indicate that relative to young White male drivers, young Black male drivers are about five times more likely to be pulled over in the company of other young men of the same race. Using the veil-of-darkness test, we show that this disparity cannot be easily explained by racial differences in motorist behavior (such as carpooling). Our analyses reveal that young Black men in groups experience a significantly elevated probability of being stopped for traffic violations when daylight visibility facilitates officer discernment of vehicle passengers. Previous studies have overlooked this dynamic, implicitly assuming that multi-occupant vehicle stops are equally distributed across racial groups and/or that having a lone young Black male driver would produce a ceiling effect in the level of disparate scrutiny and selective traffic enforcement. We find that while young Black males traveling alone are disadvantaged in inter-racial comparisons, intra-racially they are less likely to be targeted than young Black males in groups. Overall, our results suggest that beyond a present-versus-absent dichotomy, the greater the presence of young Black men in a vehicle, the greater the likelihood of being selected for a pretextual traffic stop.