After a lengthy and contentious process to restrict police “pretext” stops, data from the San Francisco Police Department shows a reduction in the racial disparities long seen in traffic enforcement.
Pretext stops are the use of certain non-moving traffic violations, like hanging an air freshener from a rearview mirror or missing a single tail light, as the primary reason for a police stop. A policy, implemented by the civilian police commission last year, restricted those stops.
The commissioners’ reasoned that officers disproportionately targeted Black drivers as a pretext to search for criminal activity.
Soon after the new policy went into effect in 2024, white people surpassed Black people as the group subject to the most searches for the first time since 2021.
That is more in line with San Francisco’s demographics. The city is more than 50 percent white, and Black people make up only about 5 percent of the city’s population. But they historically accounted for up to 40 percent of drivers searched, while white people often made up under 30 percent of those searched.
Proponents say they’re happy with the change.
“The initial impacts of this policy show that we can reduce the over-policing of communities of color without compromising public safety,” said Public Defender Mano Raju, whose office was involved in advocating for the policy, in a statement. “The Police Commission should continue to uphold and monitor this policy to protect the public from harmful and wasteful pretext stops.”
The proportion of Black drivers being stopped for traffic violations has dropped: Black people made up less than 20 percent of drivers stopped in 2025 — the first time that’s happened since the SFPD began presenting this data in 2019. Black drivers have historically been six times more likely to be stopped than white drivers.
“The data itself is very encouraging. We want to make sure it’s being sustained,” said Police Commission President C. Don Clay, who added that it was “way too early” to consider the disparity issues resolved.
The police commission voted to approve the policy in early 2023, but labor negotiations with the police union went slowly, leading to the commission ultimately adopting the policy over the union’s objections in early 2024. The policy went into effect in July 2024.
That October, the police union filed a lawsuit to overturn the policy, which a judge dismissed in September 2025.
I talked to a local cop about this. His take was basically, “I know who the bad guys are and I use whatever I can to get them off the streets”. And, that’s the guy who generally talks about how so many other cops really stretch the rules. In one instance, a guy was able to search a girls purse because she was “sitting on a fire-hydrant”, which is supposedly not legal. The thing is, the cop found drugs in the purse and they were there because the guy she was with was a dealer that he knew and he knew the guy stored his stash in his girlfriends purse. So, for the cop, this was a brilliant move showing his vast knowledge of the CA criminal code. For me, it was literally no different than pulling someone over using a taillight out as an excuse because you think they look like a criminal. (ie. black)
Anyway, this is a step in the right direction. We all need to realize that the laws that protect criminals and make it hard for cops ALSO protects us from abuse. I have personally experienced this, as a cop once threatened me with a bunch of false charges if I didn’t turn in someone else (who i didn’t even know). For him, this was a common practice to get information. However, since I couldn’t come up with an answer, it resulted in me spending 3 days in jail until the charges were dismissed.
Cops aren’t all bad, but we really need to assume that a lot of them are willing to twist the law as far as possible to get what they see as “the right” result. As we now see with ICE, allowing for that abuse means it can be used on anyone.
So well stated. You could be talking about today’s Supreme Court.
I think this is a “good” stop. The officer didn’t do it because of someone’s race. The officer did it because the woman was with a dealer. That’s not a pretext, there’s real suspicion there.
Maybe someday the city will give Max Carter-Oberstone the flowers he deserves for getting this done. We lost a good one.
The shame of Lurie’s removing Carter-Oberstone, a champion of accountability, transparency and justice for citizens, without ever meeting him or speaking with him burns strongly. Max will be fine. San Franciscans are diminished by Lurie’s senseless decision.
“A pre-text stop is when an officer uses a violation (whether it’s a non moving violation or otherwise) with the real intention of going on a “fishing expedition” to find other criminal activity.”
And if the stop leads to the discovery of “criminal activity”, then doesn’t that ipso facto justify that particular stop?
You are correct and that is a statistic that they will never publish. I would say that even if only 10 out of 100 people pulled over are actually found doing bad shit, carrying guns, drugs, weapons, stolen merch, etc. –it is totally worth it to the public.
What kind of suffering are they claiming when they get caught?
Don’t do bad things and then who cares if you get pulled over?
A few seconds of inconvenience and you’re cleared if you’re clean. This is an inconvenience we all have to take the time to go through while they sift through the bad seeds.
People that cry that they got pulled over obviously have something to hide.
“Defund the police” and laissez faire policies in SF policing is only necessary for criminals. The rest of us want some supervision and active crime fighting so we can raise our families safely without randomly being shot while eating a burrito while sitting on a park bench outside of Dolores Park
They’re still only stopping about a third of the number of people they were before COVID (~1800 vs ~5500) or about 1 traffic stop per SFPD cop per month. Now that they know how they should stop people can they actually stop people? Driving and walking in the city is a nightmare.
Glad to see this!
I was surprised to see the note that SF is > 50% white though. If you follow the data, that’s only if you count Hispanic as white.
Per the source cited in the article, SF is 37.3% asian, 37% white, 16.8% hispanic, 5.6% black.
“Pretext stops are the use of certain non-moving traffic violations, like hanging an air freshener from a rearview mirror or missing a single tail light, as the primary reason for a police stop.”
No, that’s not what a pre-text stop is. A pre-text stop is when an officer uses a violation (whether it’s a non moving violation or otherwise) with the real intention of going on a “fishing expedition” to find other criminal activity.
It’s the officers intent that makes it a pre-text stop, regardless of what the violation is. Officer still can and will use other violations as pre-texts for fishing expeditions.
But it is nice to hear this change in policy has led to reducing that disparity.