Stopped for windshield wipers or being Black? Disputed stats reveal Lexington problem
Toria Levy was turning onto Third Street from Newtown Pike one night in early 2019 when a Lexington police officer pulled her over.
The officer had a question: Did she know her windshield wipers were on?
Levy, a Black Florida native and soon to be third-year law student at the University of Kentucky, was at first perplexed and then dumbfounded. It was a cold night and her windshield was fogging up. She had the wipers on to clear the windshield. But that’s not a crime.
The police officer had another question.
“He said: ‘Do I smell marijuana?” Levy recalled in a recent interview. Levy doesn’t smoke marijuana. She had been at a friend’s house to watch a UK basketball game, but no one was smoking marijuana there either. “I even gave the guy the benefit of the doubt,” Levy said. “I even thought: Maybe I had a friend in the car recently who had smoked marijuana.”
Levy was asked to exit the car. The police officer then asked her to do a series of sobriety tests — walk on the curb, follow the officer’s pen with her eyes. She had not had anything to drink that night. It was clear she was sober.
“Then a second police officer showed up,” Levy said. The officers asked about her Florida license plates. She told them she was a UK law student who lived nearby. They eventually let her go.
“They had no reason to stop me,” Levy said. “Whether I have my windshield wipers on or not is not a violation. “
Levy, who has been driving since she was 15 years old in Florida, had been pulled over once there — for speeding of which she was guilty. In Boston for four years while attending Boston University, she had only one encounter with Boston police — they returned her wallet after she lost it.
Levy told her Black friends who grew up in Lexington and other parts of Kentucky about her experience.
They weren’t surprised, she said. “They said that’s what happens here,” Levy said.
Lexington Police Department data shows Black drivers are disproportionately ticketed and issued warnings given their population size.
From 2015 to 2019, about 23 percent of all tickets and warnings by Lexington police went to black drivers. Black people make up 14 percent of Fayette County’s population. Moreover, the number of Black people of driving age is only 11.9 percent of the total population.
During that same period, Black men received 14 percent of those tickets and warnings but Black driving-age men are only 5.2 percent of the population. Black women of driving age are 6.2 percent of the overall population and received 9 percent of the tickets and warnings issued.
Moreover, 25 percent of people who were charged with a subsequent offense after a traffic stop were Black.
Police challenge race comparisons
The Lexington Police Department said it was not fair to use Fayette County’s Census data to show Black people are overrepresented in traffic stop data. There are thousands of out-of-town drivers on Lexington streets.
“Lexington has commuters driving in, out and through the city every day,” said Brenna Angel, a Lexington police spokeswoman. “According to the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet, the annual average daily traffic count for I-75 alone in Fayette County is more than 101,000.”
The traffic stop data is not broken down by location or areas of town.
There is data to support that many vehicles on Lexington streets are not from Fayette County. Studies during the 2018 Comprehensive Plan showed that more than half of Lexington’s workforce lives in surrounding counties — not just counties contiguous to Fayette County.
But the surrounding counties — the most likely area where out-of-town drivers are coming from — are predominately white, Census data shows. The Blue Grass Area Development District, which consists of 17 counties with Fayette County in its center, is only 8.7 percent Black compared to Fayette County’s 14 percent Black population.
To show whether Black people are more likely to be pulled over by Lexington police, the city would have to weed out all out-of-town drivers who received citations and warnings.
“We do not feel that looking at traffic stop data in comparison with the census population is a fair assessment,” Angel said.
Yet in 2000, the Lexington Police Department did just that. In 1999, the Lexington Herald-Leader analyzed five years of traffic tickets and found Black men were much more likely to be ticketed than white men. After the stories ran, Lexington police did its own analysis of all traffic and pedestrian stops including those when no ticket or warning was issued.
Then-Lexington Police Chief Larry Walsh and then- Mayor Pam Miller held a press conference in September 2000 and said the results showed black men were disproportionately stopped by police on foot and in vehicles, given the Black population’s smaller size in Fayette County.
“There is inequity across the board. We’re doing our best to address that,” Walsh said in 2000. Walsh also put in place an order banning racial profiling and requiring annual diversity training.
Angel said the police department no longer tracks pedestrian stops. In 2000, that data showed Black men — who made up 6 percent of the city’s adult population at that time — were the subjects of 28 percent of the 476 pedestrian searches from February to September 2000.
Angel said even in 2000, it was noted that the data was not perfect. “It’s not that we don’t want to use that data but rather pointing out that it’s not an apples-to-apples comparison,” she said.
The department has tracked traffic stops over time and the percentages of white and Black drivers stopped has remained the same, said Lexington Police Chief Lawrence Weathers.
“If the data is consistent over time that means we are going after violations, not specific demographics,” Weathers said.
That’s true. The data shows that in 2015, 21 percent of all citations and warnings went to Black drivers while 74 percent went to white drivers. In 2019, 23 percent of citations and warnings went to Black drivers while 73 percent were white drivers.
Still, Weathers said the department is looking at reevaluating what types of data it needs to collect.
“We want people to call us and tell us if there is a problem,” Weathers said. “Unless people call us and let us know, we don’t necessarily know it’s a problem.”
‘There is mistrust and you can’t ignore it’
Black faith leaders who have pushed the city to make changes in policing and economic policies after the police-involved killings of Breonna Taylor in Louisville and George Floyd in Minneapolis said inconsistencies in how Lexington police interpret traffic data over the past 20 years is frustrating.
Rev. Nathl Moore of First African Baptist Church on Price Road said the Black community has for decades felt targeted by Lexington police, particularly for minor traffic violations.
“There is a mistrust issue and you can’t ignore that,” Moore said. “That affects the police’s ability to do their job. There has to be a buy-in between the police and community. It’s really a public safety issue.”
That distrust is not based on national stories, such as Taylor or Floyd, Moore said.
“There is respect for individual officers like Sgt. Rashaan Berry,” Moore said. Berry has worked hard to develop a rapport with residents in the Georgetown Street corridor, he said.
“As far as the unit as a whole, the trust issue is not there,” Moore said. “It’s based on local encounters with Lexington police in their neighborhoods.”
Rev. David Peoples agreed. By dismissing the data, the department is also dismissing the voices of Black residents who have said there is a problem, he said.
“It’s a problem here,” Peoples said.
Peoples’ adult son was sitting outside Peoples’ home in the Polo Club Boulevard area in Hamburg about three years ago when a Lexington officer approached his car and demanded to see the younger Peoples’ identification. Peoples said the officer wanted to make sure his son, who is in the military and now stationed in Japan, lived there.
“That’s not something that white people have to do deal with,” Peoples said.
“There seems to be no action taking place. That erodes the confidence that Black people have in the police,” Peoples said.
Peoples pointed to the recent retirement of former Lexington police chaplain Donovan Stewart, who has been accused of striking a Black teenager at the Fayette Mall in February 2019. The teen was charged in juvenile court. Stewart alleges the teen struck him first and has sued protesters in state court for “blatantly false, outrageous lies” about Stewart and his family. There is no body camera footage from the incident. There is bystander video that shows Stewart striking the teen after the teen was restrained.
Because Stewart retired, an internal investigation into what happened is now moot.
“That’s the type of thing that shakes the confidence of the Black community,” Peoples said of Stewart’s retirement. “We don’t have much faith in the criminal justice and law enforcement system.”
Daniel Whitley, a criminal defense attorney, said the data shows what he has seen in court: Black people are more likely to be stopped by Lexington police than white people. Whitley said the data doesn’t show how many Black drivers are searched after a traffic stop.
Angel said the department does not collect that data.
They should, Whitley said.
“I have clients who have been pulled over for a minor traffic violation. Then the officer says, ‘I think I smell marijuana.’ Then their car is being searched and the canine units are brought in,” Whitley said.
Louisville Metro Police Department tracks searches after traffic stops. In 2016 and 2017, the most recently available figures, stops involving Black drivers were more likely than stops involving white drivers to result in a search. In 2017, consent searches were the most likely searches to be conducted in stops involving white drivers but probable cause searches were more likely in stops involving Black drivers, the data showed. Consent searches are conducted after the verbal consent of the driver. Probable cause searches are when an officer believes the vehicle contains fruits of a crime, contraband or instruments of a crime.
Louisville police also track whether officers found something after those searches — such as drugs or an unregistered weapon —by race. In 2016, vehicle stops of white drivers involving searches were less likely than those similar stops involving Black drivers to result in a positive finding during a search. In 2017, the opposite was true as vehicle stops involving white drivers were slightly more likely to result in a positive finding than similar stops involving Black drivers, the analysis found.
Whitley said many Black people who feel that they have been unfairly pulled over by the police won’t report it because they fear the police and they fear the department will dismiss it.
“I get so frustrated because I’m in the courts fighting this every day,” Whitley said. “Many of these kids feel like they are getting pulled over all the time.”
Former Lexington-Fayette Urban County Councilwoman Angela Evans was a public defender for several years. She recently resigned from the council to go to graduate school.
Many of her Black clients were stopped for minor equipment-related violations, Evans said. It was rare for a white client to be pulled over for a tinted window violation.
“It was broken taillights, tinted window and the music was too loud.,” Evans said. “Those were the consistent violations and then it led to other charges.”
Evans said the department should look at how many white motorists are being pulled over for equipment-related violations verses Black motorists. The department could also look at tracking that data by police sector to see if there is bias in certain parts of town, she said.
Weathers said the department is open to collecting and analyzing equipment-related violations and collecting search data after a traffic stop.
“I don’t think that would be a problem for us and it may show us something,” Weathers said.
A ‘suspicious vehicle’ or racism?
It was on the city’s whiter, south side that Levy had her next encounter with Lexington police.
In the fall of 2019 she was working for now-Gov. Andy Beshear’s campaign when she parked beside a gas station in a Lexington neighborhood. She was waiting for instructions from the campaign on which Lexington neighborhood she was supposed to canvas next.
“An officer knocked on my window and said, ‘Can I help you?’” Levy said. Levy was confused. She didn’t need help. She was parked on the side of the road legally.
The officer said they had received a call of a “suspicious vehicle” parked for 10 minutes.
“Suspicious vehicle? I drive a Nissan Sentra,” Levy said. Her car wasn’t suspicious. She was suspicious because she is Black, Levy knew. Levy explained she was waiting on the Beshear campaign for further canvassing instructions. The officer was satisfied, but she still had to show him her identification and vehicle registration. The neighborhood was predominately white, Levy said. Levy said she couldn’t remember which neighborhood because she went to so many last fall. She’s also only lived in Lexington for two years.
Levy told her parents in Florida about the incident. They were aghast.
“In Florida, you can park for 10 minutes without the police showing up,” Levy said.
Angel said police have to respond when there is a call. Police ask for registration and identification when someone is in a vehicle, even if it is parked, because that person must have proper registration, license and insurance to drive.
A little more than a week after that incident Levy was canvassing door to door in another neighborhood in Lexington. She knocked on a door and a man yelled: “Who is it?” through the closed door. Levy told him that she was with the Beshear campaign. She started to walk away and was on the sidewalk when the homeowner appeared from the side yard — carrying a gun. The man was white.
“I was very calm about it at the time and just kept walking. But looking back on it… that’s just a crazy situation,” Levy said. “But that’s what African-Americans have to deal with all the time.”
Levy will graduate from UK law school in May. Will she stay in Lexington?
No.
“I’m more of a fast-paced city girl,” Levy said. The negative encounters she has had with Lexington police and racism in Lexington is not the main reason why she is not going to stay, she said. “I’ve also met a lot of great people here.”
This story was originally published July 16, 2020 at 1:15 PM.
