TJ Grayson is a third-year student at Yale Law School. James Forman Jr. is the J. Skelly Wright Professor of Law at Yale and the author of “Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America.”

The past week has given us a familiar set of tragedies. With the death of Daunte Wright and the brutal harassment of Army 2nd Lt. Caron Nazario, we must add the following to the list of actions that can shatter Black lives: having expired tags or temporary plates.

Many of the deaths garnering media attention in recent years resulted from armed police officers enforcing traffic violations, even minor ones. A Minnesota police officer pulled over Philando Castile for a broken taillight, then fired seven shots at him. A Texas state trooper stopped Sandra Bland for not signaling when she changed lanes. Three days later, she was dead in a jail cell. According to a Washington Post database, about 11 percent of all fatal shootings by police in 2015 occurred during traffic stops; Black people accounted for a disproportionate share of those deaths.

www.washingtonpost.com

Reduce police violence by creating separate agencies to conduct traffic enforcement — with unarmed officers.

#PoliceBrutality #PoliceMisconduct #BlackLivesMatter #BLM