Charlotte Police May Address Racial Imbalance in Traffic Stops

In response to community demands for change, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Chief Estella Patterson may reconsider her department’s traffic-stop practices.

The push came after Patterson confirmed in October that seven officers had for years participated in a text thread containing racist statements.

Charlotte police data shows that every year, for every type of traffic stop, police stop Black drivers at a higher rate than white drivers, The Assembly reported on October 28. Citywide racial disparities regarding who gets searched and arrested after the stops have grown, The Assembly found. 

Groups including The Second Chance Federation, a nonprofit supporting North Carolinians after incarceration, say pulling drivers over for regulatory infractions such as broken tail lights or expired registrations leads to unnecessary searches and arrests that disproportionately affect Black drivers. The group has called for CMPD to immediately suspend such stops. 

Rev. Corine Mack, president of the Charlotte chapter of the NAACP, met with Patterson last week to discuss the texts and racial disparities in the department’s traffic stops. She believes change could happen.

“She’s open to doing something different,” Mack said.We have a lot more to work through, but I was happy about that.”

The Mecklenburg County Sheriff’s Office ended regulatory stops in 2022. Fayetteville did it in 2013, when the department focused more on safety-related stops, like speeding. A University of North Carolina Chapel Hill study found the latter change led to fewer crashes and narrowed the gap in traffic stop rates between Black drivers and white drivers. 

Patterson plans to meet with community groups over the coming weeks to hear more about their concerns, including about the department’s traffic stop policies, CMPD spokesperson Erin Wiggins confirmed.

“There is a lot to be considered,” Wiggins said, “and the data is only one piece of that. It’s an important piece, but it is only one piece.”

Mack, the local NAACP president, wants the department to examine its police-stop policies and to make mandatory ongoing implicit bias training for officers, she said. Her organization plans to meet with Patterson again in November after the chief and her team have had time to review the data, Mack said. 

“I’m hopeful,” Mack said, expressing confidence in a leader who spent most of her law enforcement career in Charlotte and returned in 2025 to head its department. “I think that Stella Patterson is the chief that we need for today.”