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.
The new traffic stop policy, implemented by the civilian police commission last year, restricts 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 stop. The commissioners’ reasoning was that those stops disproportionately targeted Black drivers and were used as a pretext to search for criminal activity.
Soon after the new policy went into effect in 2024, whites surpassed Blacks as the racial group subject to the most searches for the first time since a single quarter of 2021 — indicating more proportional enforcement across races in a city that is more than 50 percent white. Black people make up only about 5 percent of the city’s population but historically accounted for up to 40 percent of drivers searched, while whites often made up under 30 percent of those searched.
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. The policy’s proponents say they’re happy with the new trends and attribute them to the police commission’s actions.
“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: Blacks 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.