Back to Driving While Black.

• Author: Moskos, Peter
• Position: LETTERS - Letter to the editor

Charles Epp and Steven Maynard-Moody ("Driving While Black," January/February 2014) say that "[police] departments should prohibit stops unless justified by evidence of a violation." Conveniently, that already is the law of the land. Court decisions prohibit police from stopping people for anything less than "reasonable suspicion." Similarly, all car stops must be proceeded by an actual traffic violation.

Admittedly, the current New York Police Department practice of "checking a box" to articulate reasonable suspicion is not enough (and a shameful admittance by departmental brass that they do not trust their officers' ability to articulate reasonable suspicion), but what do the authors want? What they propose is already banned. Police may not legally "stop people out of curiosity or unspecified suspicion."

If the authors simply wish police to follow the law, I think were all in agreement. But if investigatory stops were completely banned, police would be nothing more than courts' bailiffs serving warrants.

Peter Moskos

Associate Professor, John Jay College of Criminal Justice

Charles Epp responds:

Allowing police stops if based only on evidence of a violation may be the "law of the land," but only in the most abstract and irrelevant sense of that term. In most jurisdictions law and practice allow, even...