LOS ANGELES — Last spring, Los Angeles police officials decided to deal with a problem.
Their officers, like cops across the U.S., had been trained for decades in the art of pretextual stops: Pull over a driver for a minor infraction such as broken taillight, use something vaguely suspicious — a shaking hand, a whiff of pot — to justify a search, hope to find drugs or weapons.
The tactic is legal and has led to plenty of seizures. But Los Angeles Police Department Chief Michel Moore and the civilian oversight commission were grappling with the fact that the city’s Black and Latino residents were disproportionately targeted for the fishing expeditions.
