There's a useful debate to be had over the usefulness of the many traffic regulations we're required to follow, but it's hard to have that debate here, when the entire event started with an illegal stop by an officer, and none of the rest would have happened without that.
Umm... Did you read the story? The original stop was illegal to begin with (that is, the cop was doing an illegal activity). Then the driver in question had all her papers in order (which she proved to the Mayor/Judge with documentation). But the fine was not just not dropped... they arrested her for not paying that unjust fine and threw her in prison for 25 days.
"When Godwin ran Parker’s license, the computer said it was suspended. He also said the registration card was expired."
That's the root problem, not the stop. There was, from the cops perspective, a real infraction here. So rather than debate the constitutionality of the stop, we should address the overly-complex system that resulted in this perceived infraction. If the computer was wrong, fix the machine. If the paperwork was actually expired, why are they still using paper? If we don't want cops issuing onerous citations for these things, change the laws so they cannot. We should not patch over bad laws by simply not enforcing them.
In many jurisdictions (ie mine) the entire stop would have been perfectly legal. We display out registration/insurance details on a license plates. So cops are perfectly justified in pulling cars over with expired registration/insurance/plates. They need not speculate. They cannot claim suspicion or the need to check paperwork when the plate shows validity. And and driver stepping into a car can see on the plate whether everything is correct. Every cop should be able to lookup a plate and check all the paperwork prior to pulling anyone over.
Lawyers have argued about the stop and the verdict has been reached and upheld on appeal. The rest of your arguments are just as ignorant of the actual case.
"There was, from the cops perspective, a real infraction here"
No there wasn't. The cop himself said so.
"officer hit his lights and pulled her over. The officer, David Godwin, later testified that he stopped the pickup “just to check and see” and to “find out what was going on.”
Once again, please read the OP and for the love of god, stop spewing ignorant opinion.
No, the root problem is that a police officer decided to unconstitutionally stop a car with 3 African Americans, because they had committed the crime of being African American.
I am curious about racial motivations and racial disparity though. It might be reasonable to think that the cop didn't pull over the people due to their race, as it was dark and I don't know if there was any way he could have seen that well. I wonder though if there is a way to find out a stops vs "run the license" ratio and if it indicates any racial biases. The run the license part should be gleanable from logs, but the number of stops part may be difficult - I don't know how those are recorded and how accurately they are recorded.
> Absent a traffic violation, so far as can be gleaned from this record, the only visible attribute of Parker and her passengers that might have distinguished them from other motorists turning on Methodist Parkway was they are all African Americans. There simply is no other distinguishing thing that can be surmised.