Operation Pipeline Explained

Operation Pipeline is a program of the United States Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA),^[1] that trains police officers across the country on drug interdiction methods on roads.^{[2] [3]} The program began in the 1980s. The American Civil Liberties Union wrote in 1999 that the program was "instrumental" in increasing the usage of pretext stops by law enforcement, and criticized materials used in the program as "implicitly (if not explicitly) encouraged the targeting of minority motorists."^[2] Michelle Alexander, in her book The New Jim Crow, deemed the program "perhaps the best known" of a series of DEA programs created during the war on drugs that "train[] police to conduct utterly unreasonable and discriminatory stops and searches throughout the United States."^[4]

In the 1980s and 1990s, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police developed a similar program in Canada.^[5]

Further reading

• Road Work: Racial Profiling and Drug Interdiction on the Highway. Gross. Samuel R.. Bames. Katherine Y.. Michigan Law Review. 651–754. 2002.
• Book: Heumann . Milton . Good Cop, Bad Cop: Racial Profiling and Competing Views of Justice . Cassak . Lance . 2003 . Peter Lang . 978-0-8204-5829-8 . en.
• Book: Wiener . Richard L. . Social Consciousness in Legal Decision Making: Psychological Perspectives . Bornstein . Brian H. . Schopp . Robert . Willborn . Steven L. . 2007-05-11 . Springer Science & Business Media . 978-0-387-46218-9 . en.

Notes and References

1. News: Kocieniewski . David . 2000-11-29 . New Jersey Argues That the U.S. Wrote the Book on Race Profiling . en-US . The New York Times . 2023-11-21 . 0362-4331.
2. Web site: Driving While Black: Racial Profiling On Our Nation's Highways . 2023-11-21 . American Civil Liberties Union . en.
3. Web site: September 10, 2019 . Operation Pipeline Training Course . United States Drug Enforcement Agency.
4. Book: Alexander, Michelle . The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness . 2020-01-07 . The New Press . 978-1-62097-194-9 . en. 89.
5. News: Owusu-Bempah . Akwasi . Anthony Morgan . July 16, 2016 . A hard truth: Canada's policing style is very similar to the U.S. . 2016-07-18 . The Globe and Mail.