Langton, L., & Durose, M. R. (2013). Police behavior during traffic and street stops, 2011. Washington, DC: US Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Statistics.

The data in this report were drawn from the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ (BJS) 2011 Police-Public Contact Survey (PPCS), a supplement to the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), which collects information from a nationally representative sample of persons in U.S. households. The PPCS collects information on contact with police during a 12-month period. is report examines involuntary contacts with police, specifically those that occurred when the person was the driver of a motor vehicle (i.e., tra c stops) or when the person was stopped by the police while in a public place but not in a moving vehicle (i.e., street stops). It describes variations in perceptions of police behavior and police legitimacy during traffic and street stops. (For more information on how perceptions of police behavior and legitimacy were measured in this report, see survey questions on page 12.) All findings in this report are based on persons for whom the most recent contact in 2011 was in a street stop or as the driver in a traffic stop.