Cohort 2025
Forward Justice
Demonstrating the Impact of Suspending Regulatory Traffic Stops
Mecklenburg County, NC
In response to decades of disproportionate stops and searches of Black communities in North Carolina, Forward Justice, a nonpartisan law, policy, and strategy center dedicated to advancing racial, social, and economic justice in the southern US, advocated for policy reform and secured a commitment from the Mecklenburg County Sheriff’s Department to suspend all regulatory traffic stops for nonmoving violations in 2022. Nonmoving-violation regulatory traffic stops are stops made for violations that do not pose an immediate risk to public safety, such as having an expired registration or being uninsured. Research indicates that limiting these stops does not negatively affect safety. In Mecklenburg County, 5 of the 10 most charged offenses from 2014 to 2023 were regulatory traffic violations.
In addition, Forward Justice launched NC CopWatch, a website where community members can access data on law enforcement stops, searches, and use of force to unmask disparities resulting from racist policing and incarceration. The site is a resource for community members, organizers, and advocates in counties across North Carolina seeking transparency, accountability, and reform in statewide criminal legal system policies.
With Catalyst grant funding, Forward Justice will analyze and visualize law enforcement data from after regulatory traffic stops were suspended in Mecklenburg County to illustrate how such reforms can reduce discriminatory outcomes without compromising public safety. The 2022 policy change by the Mecklenburg County Sheriff’s Department did not extend to the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department; Forward Justice will analyze Mecklenburg County traffic stop data from a year before and after the policy was implemented and compare these data with Charlotte-Mecklenburg police data. Using these data, Forward Justice will develop web-based and infographic toolkits to illustrate the impact of the policy intervention to community members and relevant policymakers. This project is intended to advance efforts for data-driven reform across other law enforcement agencies in Mecklenburg County and agencies in other municipalities.
Forward Justice was also a Catalyst grantee in 2021. Read about its 2021 project, Using Policing Data and Collaboration to Advocate for Criminal Justice Reform.
