Letter To Editor: Wethersfield PD Traffic Stops

To the Editor:

According to the Connecticut Racial Profiling Prohibition Project, this past summer marked the sixth year in a row that the Wethersfield Police Department was guilty of making the most racially biased traffic stops in Hartford County. How many years must pass us by before we demand change?

According to the 2020 U.S. Census, the town of Wethersfield has a population of more than 27,000. Within that population, 86% of those people identify as white, while 8% identify as Hispanic, and 4% as Black. However, researchers found that Hispanic individuals were 15% more likely to be stopped, while Blacks were 13% more. This discriminatory policing is unacceptable.

Traffic stops should be equally enforced, regardless of race. Racially profiling traffic stops does not make communities safer, but does the opposite. Communities across the country have fought to end discriminatory policing through reformed trainings to educate officers on implicit bias, and give them strategies to combat it. In a 2020 issue of Time Magazine, it was reported that Oakland, California police departments worked to end bias by enforcing police officers to answer specific questions regarding the reason behind the stop. This addition decreased their traffic stops by 13,000 to which Blacks were stopped 43% less than previously. And what they found was that the city wasn’t more dangerous, but actually safer.

I urge us all to come together and demand action to end police bias and make our community safer.

Tiffany Diorio