The Pasadena Police Department’s shooting and killing of Anthony McClain in 2020—following a pretextual traffic stop for a missing front license plate—received a scathing Office of Independent Review (OIR) report on the handling of the incident. The report, which appeared this past April, raises grave questions regarding pretextual stops, including the pretextual reasons for the stop, the officer’s decision to pursue on foot someone he believed to have a gun, the chaotic crime scene, and officers’ same mistakes that OIR had investigated in a similar killing nearly eleven years before and had made recommendations to change.

The Policing Practices Subcommittee is reviewing police traffic stop policies in Pasadena, South Pasadena, and Monrovia in an effort to inform and urge those departments to join LAPD, SFPD, Berkeley PD, and others to drop the use of minor violations as pretexts for stopping vehicles without substantive reasoning that a crime may have been committed. The California Racial and Identity Profiling Act (RIPA) survey of California law enforcement officers is showing pervasive racial bias in such stops.

We invite all who want to see more equitable and accountable law enforcement in California and our League area to join us by contacting Kris Ockershauser at socialjusticepolicepractices [at] lwv-pa.org. The Policing Practices Subcommittee meets next on June 20 at 3:00 p.m. at the LWV-PA office.

—Kris Ockershauser, Chair, Policing Practices Subcommittee