report<\/a> found that one-third of traffic stops conducted by the Sacramento Police Department were of Black drivers \u2014 more than three times the rate of white drivers \u2014 even though only 12% of the city\u2019s residents are Black. It used data from 2023-2024 collected through the Racial and Identity Profiling Act.<\/p>\nMany of those stops were for minor violations such as missing license plates or expired registration tags, a tactic the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California said police often use as a \u201cpretext\u201d to pull someone over without reasonable suspicion of a crime.<\/p>\n
Additionally, both Black and Latino drivers were searched by Sacramento police at higher rates \u2014 2.1 times and 1.5 times, respectively \u2014 the report found.<\/p>\n
\u201cTargeting Black and Latino drivers for minor violations like tinted windows is basically stop-and-frisk for driving,\u201d Carlos Montes-Ponce, a senior organizer at the ACLU of Northern California, said in a news release. \u201cWhile pretext stops have a negligible impact on public safety, they can have deadly consequences for people of color.\u201d<\/p>\n
The ACLU also cited a 2023 audit by the Sacramento Office of Public Safety Accountability, which showed that, over two years, police \u201conly stopped Black and Latino motorists for tinted windows.\u201d<\/p>\n
White drivers received the highest share of citations relative to the number of traffic stops, the report found, while Black drivers were cited at the lowest rate. And in 90% of searches, police did not seize any items, the ACLU said.<\/p>\n
Sacramento police spokesperson Allison Smith told FOX40 the department is aware of the ACLU report.<\/p>\n
\u201cFrom academy onward, our officers receive training on the practices of fair and principled policing,\u201d she said in a statement. \u201cThe department remains committed to providing high-quality police services while constantly reviewing policies and practices to support effective policing and maintaining public trust.\u201d<\/p>\n
The ACLU suggested Sacramento follow in the footsteps of other Northern California cities and adopt a policy that would prohibit officers from stopping drivers for non-safety-related violations.<\/p>\n
\u201cSacramento should follow the lead of cities like San Francisco and Berkeley that have restricted enforcement of non-moving traffic violations,\u201d Montes-Ponce said.<\/p>\n
Copyright 2026 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.<\/p>\n
For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to FOX40 News. <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(FOX40.COM) \u2014 A new ACLU report alleges Sacramento police disproportionately target Black and Latino drivers in traffic stops.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":321706,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[32905,133617,134062,121,123,122,9113,114279],"class_list":["post-321705","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sacramento","tag-aclu","tag-latino-drivers","tag-minor-violations","tag-sacramento","tag-sacramento-headlines","tag-sacramento-news","tag-sacramento-police-department","tag-traffic-stops"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321705","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=321705"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321705\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/321706"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=321705"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=321705"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=321705"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}