#ENDTHESTOPS: PrOTECT Communities from Biased Policing

Mayor Todd Gloria & San Diego City Council

Tell San Diego City Council that the time is now to end the stops. Sign this petition urging city council and the mayor to pass the PrOTECT ordinance which ends pretext stops and consent searches.

Sponsored by
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Mid-City CAN (Community Advocacy Network)
San Diego, CA

To: Mayor Todd Gloria & San Diego City Council
From: [Your Name]

We know that when police officers have more discretion to stop and search someone, significant racial and identity disparities are prevalent. San Diego needs to protect Black, Asian Pacific Islander and Latino people, the LGBT community and the disabled community from biased policing.

A number of reports and analyses released in recent years confirm that there are racial and identity disparities in the San Diego Police Department police practices. This is not a problem SDPD can train its way out of. Practices must change. SDPD has shown it is not willing to make this change alone and we need our elected leaders to take action.

  • SDSU Traffic Study 2016
    “Citywide and across 2014 and 2015, Black and Hispanic drivers were more likely than White drivers to be searched following a traffic stop, and despite facing higher search rates, were less likely to be found with contraband…”

  • Campaign Zero Report 2019
    “Black people were 23% more likely and Latinx people were 60% more likely to have San Diego police conduct a consent search...and were less likely than white people to be found with contraband during these searches.”

  • 2019 Voice of San Diego Reporting
    “Black people stopped by law enforcement were searched at higher rates than any other race: 22 percent by Sheriff’s deputies and 24 percent by San Diego police. But at the same time, searches of black people resulted in lower or roughly the same rate of property seizures compared with other races, at 14 percent and 10 percent of the time, respectively.”

We need to end these harmful stops and searches by the police and pass a law that ends these discretionary and racially biased police practices. We need to pass PrOTECT.

PrOTECT will:

  • Require officers to have probable cause to stop, detain or search anyone including “Fourth Waivers” - people on probation or parole who have waived some of their Fourth Amendment rights.
  • Require probable cause for searches.
  • Prohibit officers from questioning people about any offenses beyond the offense for which they were stopped unless the officer have probable cause.