A state lawmaker from Portland who was stopped by police twice in three days during his commute home from the Capitol in Salem said Thursday the frequency of those incidents is a concrete example of how law enforcement disproportionately targets Black motorists.
Rep. Travis Nelson, a Democrat and registered nurse, said police pulled him over near Woodburn on Monday because they said he was driving approximately 11 mph above the speed limit and not staying in his lane. On Wednesday evening, Nelson was pulled over again because an officer saw him using his phone to reconnect to a Zoom call, he said. Officers did not issue him a ticket in either instance.
Nelson tweeted about the second incident, noting that the traffic stop took place on the first day of Black history month.
“I’m not prescribing any malintent to the officers,” Nelson told The Oregonian/OregonLive Thursday. “They were not aggressive, they were both very nice … What I will say is when you are a Black man driving, you know you have to be perfect.”
Nelson said he believed it was Oregon State Police troopers who pulled him over in both cases. In an email Thursday evening, OSP spokesperson Capt. Kyle Kennedy confirmed that two different troopers pulled Nelson over on Monday and Wednesday.
Kennedy said that state police spoke with Nelson on Thursday and “heard his concerns regarding these stops and the potential for racial bias.” Kennedy said that the driving violations for which troopers stopped Nelson were related to speed, lane use and using an electronic device while driving, all of which the agency is targeting for enforcement as part of a strategy to reduce fatal crashes.
In both cases, Nelson said police had reason to pull him over. However, he said there are well-known racial disparities regarding which drivers police choose to stop.
Nelson estimated that he has been pulled over roughly 50 times during his 25 years as a driver, about twice a year. Court records show he has never received a speeding ticket in Oregon, just one previous violation for using his phone.
Oregon State Police did not disproportionately stop or search motorists of color in 2021 to 2022, an Oregon Criminal Justice Commission report concluded.
That represented an improvement from 2020 to 2021, when Oregon State Police were found to disproportionately search the vehicles of drivers of color and mete out harsher outcomes such as citations and arrests compared to white drivers, a 2021 study by the Oregon Criminal Justice Commission found. The state police were the only Oregon policing agency among the 143 studied whose pattern of actions was found to clearly discriminate against drivers of color using two separate methods of analysis, the report said. The study found that pattern for Latino, Black, Asian American, Middle Eastern, Pacific Islander and Native American individuals as a group, not for Black drivers specifically.
Other Black lawmakers in Oregon have also shared their experiences and concerns about police disproportionately conducting traffic stops of Black drivers.
Sen. Lew Frederick, also a Democrat from Portland, told The Oregonian/OregonLive in 2020 that he has continued to be pulled over by police for pointless reasons well into his 60s and when he shared those stories with white colleagues at the Capitol, they expressed condolences but no urgency to use their power to address the problem. Rep. Janelle Bynum, D-Happy Valley, explained to a reporter in 2021 that she carefully drives to and from Salem at exactly the speed limit — slower than much of the traffic on Interstate 5 — to limit the chances that she would have an interaction with police.
— Hillary Borrud; hborrud@oregonian.com
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