Window tinting tickets biased?

Liberty Hill resident Nicole Planter drives a 2001 Mercury Mountaineer. By her count, North Charleston police have pulled her over three times to determine whether the smoky tint of her vehicle's windows is too dark, making it illegal.

Planter, who is black and lives in a high-crime area, said officers used the color of her factory-installed glass as an excuse.

"It's one of those things they know they can use as a reason to stop you," she said.

Tinted windows are in abundance on cars today, but in North Charleston, black drivers are ticketed at a much higher rate than whites for glass suspected of being illegal under state law.

Of the estimated 1,560 window-tinting tickets handled in the city's municipal court since January 2010, black drivers received about 1,200 of them, a Post and Courier review of court records shows.

That means blacks account for nearly 77 percent of these tickets, while they make up 47 percent of the city's population.

Car-window tinting isn't the only transportation-related issue in North Charleston involving blacks getting stopped more often than other races.

State law requires anyone riding a bicycle at night to have proper lighting, including a front beam strong enough to be seen at least 500 feet away. In North Charleston, most of the tickets written for these violations are being written to blacks.

Of the 44 improper-lighting tickets that went through the city's municipal court during the newspaper's 21-month review period, 39 went to blacks and four went to whites, a ratio of about 10 to 1. None was written to a member of the city's growing Hispanic population, the records indicate.

Civil rights leaders said the heavy slant of tickets adds to the perception that police are prone to harass and profile blacks in their movements around the city.

"Some of those are bogus stops," said Ed Bryant, president of the North Charleston chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. "They stop you to get inside your vehicle."

Police Chief Jon Zumalt sees the stops as an effective tool to head off crime.

Stopping people to check for minor infractions, whether in a car with questionable windows or on two wheels, is part of his strategy to prevent or detect more serious crimes. Stopping a bicyclist for a lighting infraction, for instance, might reveal a drug dealer choosing to ride to make sales, he said.

Last week, city police reported a daytime stop for a bike infraction where a search of the rider and his backpack led to the recovery of a loaded .38-caliber revolver, along with other items and weapons suspected to have come from a burglary.

'Sell-the-Stop'

The bike-lighting and window-tinting tickets are part of an effort launched more than three years ago by Zumalt to increase the number of traffic stops around North Charleston. The goal is to heighten police presence, specifically in some of the city's more violent neighborhoods. In many cases these areas are predominantly black.

The goal wasn't so much to write more tickets, he said, but to get a handle on what was happening in the neighborhoods and deter crime, Zumalt said.

He called the program "Sell-the-Stop," and told his officers they were required to engage drivers and explain why they were being pulled over, keeping the contact casual and polite, whether it was for a burned-out taillight or questionable window tinting.

Zumalt said the tactic has worked by checking the movements of criminals targeting rival neighborhoods. As evidence, he said, North Charleston has gone from the seventh-most violent city in the United States in 2006 to seeing a better than 50 percent reduction in the most violent crimes.

Zumalt is most proud of the drop in murders, which he attributes to his increased number of stops and interactions, and efforts to head off retaliatory shootings.

Only two murders have been reported this year in North Charleston, after 12 were committed in 2010 and 11 in 2009, the city said. As recently as 2006 there were 28 murders in the city.

Civil rights activists were critical, however, saying the program was unbalanced because blacks made up about half of the city's population but accounted for 65 percent of the traffic stops where a ticket or arrest was not made, a Post and Courier report detailed last year.

Crime down

Zumalt said stops to check for illegal window tinting enforces a law meant to protect police and others by outlawing car windows too dark to see inside. The law says that for any window tinting, be it factory installed or added later, at least 27 percent of light must be allowed in, with the transparency level checked by a light-specific meter.

Any vehicle equipped with after-factory tinting also must carry a certificate of compliance that includes the light transmission reading and identity of the installer.

Zumalt defended the practice as a necessary safety precaution and denied that the stops are racially motivated, even as more than half of the window-tinting tickets issued in North Charleston end up being dropped or not prosecuted.

"The high number of blacks being stopped is a result of how we are approaching crime control," he said. "During the last 10 years, blacks committed 84 percent of all of the violence in our city and 72 percent of all index crime (eight offenses used to gauge crime rates, including homicide, burglary, rape and larceny).

"They are committing this crime in predominately black neighborhoods. We send the majority of our police workforce into these predominately black neighborhoods with a zero tolerance for unlawful behavior. This results in a much higher incidence of blacks being stopped for traffic and other offenses."

Professional window tinter Dennis Hawkins of Norton's Car Stereo in North Charleston said customers seek his services for a variety of reasons, ranging from wanting to protect their interior from fading to avoiding glare to not wanting to be seen by other drivers.

Along demographic lines, Hawkins said the divide over who prefers tinting isn't so much about race as it is more a choice between young and old.

"It's a toss-up as to whether its a black or white thing," he said.

Drivers' experience

Alfred Nesbitt, 50, who is black, was pulled over while driving his 1991 Mercedes with lightly tinted windows near the Accabee area of North Charleston. He said the officer first said that he had failed to properly use his turn signal, but mentioned his car's dark window tinting, as well. Today, he questions if race was a factor.

"It was a reason to stop me, I guess," Nesbitt said. A week later, Nesbitt opted to remove the tinting.

Not all those who have been stopped for darkened windows in the past two years believe race was a factor. Frank Kiner, 47, who is black, said he knew the tint he had installed on his 1999 Lincoln Navigator was too dark when he was pulled over on Ashley Phosphate Road.

Kiner said that years ago he asked an area tint shop to install the darkest "limousine tint" available, even as he was advised that the tone would be in violation. His reasons were various -- he wanted to use his car as a limo, and he sometimes kept work tools in the vehicle that he doesn't want others to see. Also, he has light-sensitive eyes.

Bryant, of the NAACP, still has issues with the police tactics because the numbers are so heavily tilted against black drivers.

"I want to know how may crimes were prevented because of window tinting," he said.

Zumalt's department on Friday supplied two incident reports from September in which suspected window-tinting violations played roles in stops. In one case, a loaded .357 revolver was found and two arrests were made after a Ford pickup truck was pulled over on Dorchester Road. One of the men had an outstanding warrant.

In the other, a felon driving a Ford Crown Victoria was arrested after police found a ski mask in 80-degree weather with eyeholes cut into it. They also found a loaded Ruger pistol with 16 bullets in it.

Key provisions of S.C. state law 56-5-5015 covering sunscreen devices, i.e. window tinting:

The sunscreening device must be nonreflective and the combined light transmission of the sunscreening device with the factory or manufacturer installed sunscreening material must not be less than 27 percent.

Each vehicle equipped with an after-factory sunscreening device, whether installed by a consumer or professional window tinter, at all times must bear a certificate of compliance. The certificate of compliance must be of a size and form prescribed by the Department of Public Safety. Each certificate of compliance must be properly attached to the vehicle on the inside and lower right hand corner of each window containing an after-factory installed sunscreen device and must contain the following information:

(1) the percentage of light transmission allowed by the sunscreening device; (2) the identity of the installer by name, address, and telephone number; and (3) date of installation.

Key provisions of S.C. state law 56-5-370 covering proper lighting of bicycles after dark:

A bicycle when in use at nighttime must be equipped with a lamp on the front which must emit a white light visible from a distance of at least 500 feet to the front and with a red reflector on the rear that must be visible from all distances from 50 feet to 300 feet to the rear when directly in front of the lawful upper beams of head lamps on a motor vehicle. A lamp emitting a red light visible from a distance of 500 feet to the rear may be used in addition to the red reflector.