Emancipate NC attorney Ian Mance and Emancipate NC client Stephanie Bottom are featured in a new CNN documentary: “CNN Special Report- Traffic Stop: Dangerous Encounters”
In a one-hour special, CNN national correspondent Sara Sidner explores traffic stops and the psychological, social, and financial trauma they cause Black drivers who get caught up in a system fraught with racial bias. The disturbing images of unarmed Black men killed during traffic stops, and the names that go with those images: Philando Castile, Daunte Wright, Walter Scott, and more, dot the canvas of a system that does not treat Black drivers the same as White drivers. Black drivers are twice as likely as White drivers to be pulled over, and four times as likely to be searched, according to a study out of the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. This extreme disparity is difficult to explain with legitimate law enforcement objectives. Indeed, the data show that contraband is found less often on Black drivers than on White drivers.
Emancipate NC represents Ms. Bottom in a federal lawsuit that alleges that officers from the Salisbury Police Department and Rowan County Sheriff’s Office stopped her car on Interstate 85, assaulted her, pulled her out of her vehicle by her hair, and tore her rotator cuff. Emancipate NC has argued that Ms. Bottom was a victim of racial profiling, and that the officers were out looking for drugs – and using racial stereotypes to inform their roving patrol – rather than truly concerned about speeding violations.
In the documentary, which opened and closed with an account of her story, Ms. Bottom shared the profound impact that the experience had on her physical and mental health. Emancipate NC staff attorney Ian Mance also appeared to discuss traffic stop data that indicates highly differential stop, search, and use of force rates against Black motorists in North Carolina.