Not only can I blame cops, but if they don’t have probable cause for these stops, the law blames them too.

but they do have probable cause. cause to execute a traffic stop is dead easy, because nobody follows the rules of the road to the letter all the time. They never pull anybody over for "being black" or "driving a shitty car in a nice neighborhood", they pull you over for driving 5km/h over the speed limit, or rolling a stop sign, or because they think your window tint might be too dark. Things they would ignore if you were driving a nicer car. It's all perfectly legal.

This is the problem with over-regulation. Of course nobody will follow the speed limit all the time, or never jaywalk or loiter or crack a beer in public or to obey any of the other silly laws that don't actually reflect societal values or public behaviour. But those laws still exist, and if a police force decides they want to abuse their power they get to start selectively enforcing them.

I've been pulled over for:

- "You were driving suspiciously" (a little below the speed limit)

- "Saw you yesterday at this time (1 AM) and wanted to see what you were up to" (driving home from work)

- "You looked too young to be out after curfew" (was 19)

I've also been stopped and searched while walking for:

- "Walking in front of closed businesses" (walking down the sidewalk at 10 PM)

- "I caught a whiff of marijuana" (I had never even seen marijuana in real life)

And several more that escape my memory at the moment. I'm pretty sure those were all illegal stops, and that's what bothers me - not that the cop would look twice and take note of me, but that he would blatantly break the law himself with no consequences.

That was 20+ years ago, and although I'm white, I used to wear a lot of black, so I probably did fit one of the cop's "troublemaker" stereotypes. I think being a young male of any race, especially at night, accounts for most police profiling and brazenly illegal stops, but I have no doubt that young minority males experience more of it.

I'm middle eastern. I've been followed by a police car for 15-20 minutes at a time (even out of their local jurisdiction) three times so far.

This has always happened when I'm driving in a rich neighborhood.

Targeting definitely does happen. I'm not the only person with stories like this.

For the record I'm in Pennsylvania.

In another comment, they said the police never gave a reason for these stops.

Yes, we can blame them.

Why? It's reasonable to assume there's a significant correlation between this mismatch and criminal activity.

No, it's clearly not. By an overwhelming margin, most people driving "the wrong car" are not criminals; "wrong car" is not a real predictor for criminality.

Imagine a jar with two colors of gumballs: red and green. Now imagine you knew that 1 out of 1000 green gumballs were poisoned and 1 out of 10000 red gumballs were poisoned. Which gumball would you choose to chew if you had to choose? Why?

My guess is that you would choose the red gumball. Even though the vast majority of green gumballs are perfectly fine, the color of the green gumball is still a predictor for poison.

Here’s the kicker though: the more times you test a gumball for poison, the more poisonous that colour gumball becomes.

Low socioeconomic status is a predictor for criminality, as well as a predictor for car type owned. Thus car type is correlated with criminality.

High socioeconomic status is a predictor for white collar criminality, as well as a predictor for car type owned. Thus car type is correlated with criminality.

sure, but how often does a traffic stop lead to the discovery of evidence that justifies a charge for a white collar crime? the person would have to be driving around with incriminating (likely very technical) documents and do something that gives the officer probably cause to search the vehicle. the papers won't even look bad unless the officer already knows what to look for.

on the other hand, traffic stop -> suspected intoxication -> field sobriety test / drug dogs seems like a very common routine.

And this is how negative feedback loops happen.

Is it?

First part of your sentence, about most people, is obviously correct, but has no relation to the second part of your sentence about it not being a predictor for criminality.

Cops aren’t allowed to pull people over for correlations. They need probable cause.

One was a 99 Monte Carlo. Another was a 97 Civic. Others were similar. Early 2000s Hyundai. All similar in that they were low mileage, but ugly because of paint issues or hail damage, etc.