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Monday, Apr. 7, 2025

Did Colorado lawmakers try to bar police from asking, “Do you know why I pulled you over?”

Por Jaijongkit, The Colorado Sun
yes

A bill introduced in February — and rejected Wednesday by the Colorado House Judiciary Committee — sought to prohibit police from asking drivers if they know why they were pulled over. The failed legislation would have required officers to tell drivers why they were stopped.House Bill 1243 was aimed at increasing transparency and preventing police from pulling over people for a minor violation, then questioning them to uncover more serious offenses, a practice known as a “pretextual stop.” 

One of the bill’s sponsors, Democratic state Sen. Faith Winter, told a news station the bill would help limit racial profiling, saying that Black and Latino drivers are more likely to be pulled over than white drivers.

A 2019 nationwide study by the Stanford Computational Policy Lab found the per capita stop rate for Black drivers by state patrol agencies was 0.11, compared with 0.08 for whites.  

Similar laws exist in California, Minnesota and Connecticut.

See a full discussion of this at The Colorado Sun

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