I ended up with renting a mansion in Atherton right off of Fair Oaks for dirt cheap for about a year. If you look at the tickets, a lot of them are on the streets around Fair Oaks since that's also a short path to/from Redwood City and the highway.<p>I would bet a lot of money that the profiling is done based on the type of car you drive and intended to keep people from Redwood City out of Atherton.<p>I drive an older Civic and my girlfriend drives a really beat up old Civic. We would get followed home down El Camino and Fair Oaks basically every day. To the point that the police learned that our Civics actually belonged in that Atherton block and then stopped following us after a few months. I had friends come over in expensive cars and hang out and not a single one was followed. I asked them specifically to keep an eye on if they were followed because the profiling was so blatant with me. The expensive cars were never followed.<p>For what it's worth, I think that's what a lot people in Atherton pay their local government for. They don't want people there who don't live in Atherton. You go to Atherton to get away from people, e.g. lots are massive because you don't want to see your neighbors, and there aren't sidewalks or street lights in most of Atherton because they don't want people walking around at night. Because if you're rich and don't want to see your neighbors, why would you walk around at night? Funnily, the train station is right there too and the Caltrain only stops in Atherton on the weekends because they don't want the poor commuters being able to get in or out of Atherton during the week. So it's not surprising that the data shows the community police force is doing exactly what the community pays them to do - keep people who don't live in Atherton out of the city.
It seems pretty natural that if the serious penalties are for being unlicensed drivers (14602.6 VC, the $1800 thing), and most of the unlicensed people have Hispanic names/are Hispanic (which I think is generally true, in California), most of the people who get serious penalties for being unlicensed drivers will be Hispanic. There's no particular racism there on the part of the Atherton police in that. You have to have sufficient cause for a stop (other traffic infraction) to pull someone over in the first place; if the initial infraction isn't worth citing, no big deal. If the initial infraction is valid, but still not worth citing, and the driver is unlicensed, then 14602.6 VC applies. There's no particular way to tell if a driver is unlicensed otherwise, and "I thought he was unlicensed" wouldn't meet the standard of suspicion needed to do a stop, as a result. Even if someone were unlicensed and caught, if you didn't have the cause to stop him for something else, he'd walk on the unlicensed driver charge.<p>(There's plenty of other racism in society, and maybe in Atherton, but I don't think their traffic stop stats necessarily show it.)<p>Otherwise, it seems like a pretty amazing place to live. A little far from SF, perhaps, so there's a point in Hillsborough's favor, but if I could afford it, I'd be in Atherton or Hillsborough for sure. Maybe Woodside as an outside choice.
The author is cherry picking his data. He has a pool of 12,500 tickets, and is looking at a very narrow type of infraction that affected 182 drivers of 12,500. In that small pool, why do hispanic names show up disproportionately? Maybe they are more likely than your typical Atherton resident to not have a license due to immigration status.
Cruise down Middlefield past Marsh and somewhere around 5th you'll understand. There are two very different groups of people living very close together.<p>In the daytime, workers motor towards the money to toil in the plutocrats' homes and gardens. A lot of them are illegal immigrants driving marginal toyota pickups overloaded with tools and co-workers.<p>Nighttime brings-out the drunkards and the criminals. The police ward off the latter and move the former back into RWC.<p>These folks are just like you coming to Sand Hill to pitch your startup: they want money & this is where it's at. They're the same in that some will toil & some will grift. They're different in that the deviant poor are more likely to turn to violence and theft, while the psychopathic want-to-be-rich become consultants at Accenture or KPMG.<p>The rich & the poor look & behave differently. A battered PU stands-out as much as an Athertonian's Fisker just 2 miles down the street the "wrong" way.<p>They need to be protected from one another. Atherton is way too nice to be real, yet it exists, so it has to be buffered. That requires vigilance. Bay Aryans have delicate sensibilities around inegalitarianism; i.e., you need good police who will go about the business w/o putting it on display.<p>Same thing in Palo Alto. It has a stark socio-economic border with East Palo alto that requires sophisticated social policing. As a Palo Alto resident (or high-tech gastarbeiter) you feel safe and secure in a shared culture of prosperity. Yet (underreported) property crime and (unreported) deportations tell a different story: safety isn't a given, it's provided by vigilant, sophisticated police & enabled by a populace willingly suspending disbelief.<p>Catch a glimpse by spending your lunch at the transit center or your evening smoking in any alley off of University. People-watching at the PA Caltrain socio-economic nexus radically changed my "feel" of PA.<p>It's hard to overstate the difference between (poor parts of) RWC & Atherton, EPA & PA, or Belle Haven/Ravenswood & Menlo Park. If you're local, it's well worth driving (or better biking) from one to another to get the sense: incredibly, unbelievably nice on the one hand; fucking shit awful on the other. My gut says: there's something really wrong with this. But my head can't figure-out what to do about it.
Insightful.<p>However, since we live in such hyper-partisan times where news outlets toe the political line and play to the cheap seats, this story will never be picked up by the national media.<p>I'd be astounded if (or especially) a Krystal Ball or Tamron Hall or Chris Matthews gave this even a passing glance or the sundry treatment in one of their segments.<p>Why? Because this is Northern California. Scratch that. This is the Bay Area. The No-Daily-Limit ATM for the DNC.<p>Facts unchanged, if this were to have happened in a wealthy exurb in Florida or Texas, then any news producer who stumbled on this would have just struck prime-time Nielsen gold.<p>Every two-bit Latino Jesse Jackson and his Rainbow coalition would be all over the story.<p>Since this happens to be in a hyper-affluent town, the residents of which bundle and bestow generously to all sorts of progressive causes, both political and societal, they make an exception.<p>I'm certain this sort of thing happens in the toniest parts of Connecticut, New York, Massachusetts and other liberal bastions in the Northeast as well.<p>It is precisely for those like the residents of Atherton who presumably demand tough law enforcement within the city limits, for everyone besides them (and yes this is largely a presumption since there are no facts to suggest that the residents have any say in this selective enforcement), the terms limousine liberal and champagne socialist were coined.<p>This is why I heavily loathe all forms of partisanship and frown on extreme positions to both the left and right of the center.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limousine_liberal" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limousine_liberal</a><p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Champagne_socialist" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Champagne_socialist</a><p>Edit: Additions
Is it really that mysterious? Middlefield Rd in Atherton feeds into Middlefield Rd in Redwood City, which is a heavily Hispanic neighborhood, with some bodegas carrying no signage in English.<p>Next up - Cupertino police profiling Asian drivers.
> I have in no way, shape or form "hacked" Atherton or its police department to produce this site.<p>I think it's sad that the author felt compelled to include that.
I used to go jogging in Atherton a few times a week and I always wondered about all the cars getting pulled over. I wanna say in all cases it was a Hispanic driver in an older/beat-up car. Never once in the years I lived here have I seen an "expensive" car getting pulled over.
I've lived in Atherton since 1988 and decided to create a Hacker News account just so I could comment on this issue.<p>First, I applaud Kent Brewster's compilation of the data and I believe his suggestion of racial profiling was done with good intentions. Racial profiling is a terrible thing and it should be pointed out if it exists.<p>Having said that, racial profiling is not the reason that 175 of 182 people cited for driving without a license (DWOL) were Hispanic. I do agree that being cited for misdemeanors instead of citations is wrong. That's something that either needs to be stopped or perhaps has an explanation.<p>Anyone living in the Peninsula or South Bay knows that a lot of gardening, moving, and repair work is done by Hispanic people. These are the people being pulled over by the cops. They aren't local residents being pulled over.<p>It shouldn't be surprising that many of these workers are illegal immigrants. With the exception of some loopholes, it's not possible for illegal immigrants to have a driver's license. One California State Assemblyman estimates there are one million illegal immigrants DWOL in California (see <a href="http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/california-politics/2013/01/california-lawmaker-pushes-drivers-licenses-for-more-illegal-immigrants.html" rel="nofollow">http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/california-politics/2013/01/...</a>)<p>Since the Trayvon Martin ruling happened recently, I can understand that people's awareness of racial profiling is much greater. But in this case, it's really about illegal immigration and that these workers aren't allowed to have driver's licenses. Remember, they aren't being cited for drunk driving, speeding, or illegal U-turns. They're being cited for not having a license, which they don't have.<p>By the way, I've been pulled over in Atherton (my home town) three times for speeding. And I'm not Hispanic.
FWIW, I've been pulled over in Atherton. Something about an "illegal" left turn.<p>In an expensive car. At the time, I owned a property there too, and my license had that address. Got a ticket. Went to court. Judge agreed that it wasn't illegal turn.<p>Just sayin.
My [non-Hispanic] girlfriend lives in Atherton. Hispanics run that city. At first I thought it was great for my taco habit, but after our second or third burrito date I quickly realized the locals were not as thrilled to have us. We were glared at often, and my rusty Spanish was good enough to pick up murmurs of "puta madre" and other various obscenities as we walked by. Needless to say, she's moving up to the City soon, which means less $1 tacos for me...<p>On a happier note, she drives a brand new luxury SUV. I don't think I've even seen a cop drive near us.
We also live on the border of Atherton and when we drive the BMW no one bothers us. We also have an older commuter car, and when we pull out into Atherton a police cruiser will follow us along El Camino. The police wait at spots that are exit and entrance points to Fair oaks, such as Fifth and El Camino or Middlefield rd going into Fair Oaks, and by Selby Lane School. These aren't just peoples maids or gardeners, but simply people driving older beat up cars, which evidently is probable cause to stop by the Atherton PD
I got pulled over in Atherton. I was driving a filthy 15 year old Toyota I'd bought for $800. The cop said he'd only pulled me over because "dirty cars are often stolen." I didn't get a ticket since I hadn't done anything wrong, but I really don't think he had reasonable suspicion for that stop. I'm not Hispanic, but he was basically profiling me for driving a poor person's car.
If you are an undocumented immigrant, you might not have a valid driver's license, and you might have to leave your car at the site or have it impounded. Some towns in the Peninsula don't allow traffic cops to ask for immigration papers or mix up their jobs with Federal immigration laws, - I don't know about Atherton. But if you're stopped and you don't have a license, the police can ask you to leave your car by the road, and you walk home. I teach ESL, and many of my students have had to walk away from their cars. If the police do impound the car, the owners often don't have money or are afraid to go get them, so they lose their car. This happens all the time, and often causes big logistical and financial problems for the families.
I think you have incomplete data and your conclusions are, therefore, suspect.<p>To illustrate my point, you have no data points for infraction offenses (speeding, equipment violations, etc). Your data is only for misdemeanor licensing violations.<p>Given that one can't obtain a California license without a valid social security number, doesn't it make sense that the large Hispanic undocumented population would be well represented for these violations?
Only semi-related, however a parody account of Atherton made for Mountain View recently got a lot of press when some news outlets thought it was real: <a href="http://mv-voice.com/news/show_story.php?id=7229" rel="nofollow">http://mv-voice.com/news/show_story.php?id=7229</a>
I've taken a few minutes to update Profiling Atherton with the most recent month's worth of data from Menlo Park, the city just south of Atherton. Lots of confiscated cars, but the ethnic mix is much closer to what you'd expect in Silicon Valley.
What's interesting if you look at a map of Atherton on Google Maps is that exactly will the city lines are drawn, it is much more green (trees, vegetation, etc). I remember reading something about how the greener the area, the wealthier it tends to be.