After reducing the city’s traffic stop numbers by almost 95% in the last decade, some Nashville council members and officials are now advocating for a reversal of these policies as pedestrian deaths climb.
Since 2016, Nashville’s pedestrian and cyclist deaths have more than doubled and Tennessee’s total road traffic victim count hovers around 1,000 deaths annually.
The 2018 Policing Project report, which was invited by the Nashville Mayor’s office to, “advise in the development of strategies to address racial disparities and improve community-police relations in the city,” asserted, “traffic stops are not an effective strategy for reducing crime” and that there were too many “unexplained” racial disparities in traffic stops.
The report offered suggested changes to departmental procedures including reducing the number of traffic stops, acknowledging the disproportional effects of traffic stops on black residents, and reevaluating use of force policies, many of which have since been implemented or readjusted by the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department (MNPD).
