A White Man Used Expired Plates to Test Police Bias. His Testimony Went Viral

A white man in Grand Rapids says he spent a year doing something that often gets people pulled over immediately: driving without valid plates.

At a Grand Rapids City Commission meeting on Feb. 24, a resident identified as Lucas G.R. said he drove to work five days a week across multiple police jurisdictions with expired registration tags. He said he was waiting to see how long it would take for police to stop him. According to Atlanta Black Star, he went a full year without being stopped, questioned, or ticketed.

“I was never stopped or questioned once. But please do keep telling us there’s no racial or class bias in policing,” he said. “I bet if I started riding my bike around with a gun on me, nobody would call.”

Lucas G.R. was referencing the fatal police shooting of Da’Quain Johnson, a Black man and father of three who police stopped in the same city while he was riding a bike.

His police racism “experiment” started with expired plates.

According to We Got This Covered, Lucas G.R. testified that his experiment aimed to test racial bias in policing. At the meeting, he said, “I decided to start an experiment to see how long I, as a white dude, could drive around without them and not get pulled over.” He told commissioners he drove across town to work five days a week, through five different police jurisdictions, without his license plates. He said police never pulled him over.

The police racism debate grew after Da’Quain Johnson’s killing.

Lucas’s remarks came days after Grand Rapids police shot Da’Quain Johnson.

According to We Got This Covered, police pursued Johnson on Feb. 18 while he was riding a bicycle in southeast Grand Rapids because officers suspected he had a gun. The outlet reported that there were no public 911 calls about him.

Atlanta Black Star reported that Johnson, 32, was a Black father of three. Body camera footage showed a Grand Rapids officer sending a K-9 after him as he ran away. The outlet reported that the dog tackled Johnson to the ground before an officer fatally shot him three times. Authorities said they found a loaded handgun beneath Johnson. Meanwhile, the police chief maintained that the dog protected the officer after Johnson pointed a firearm at him. However, the body camera video does not show Johnson brandishing a weapon.

Amnesty International USA called for a prompt, transparent, impartial, and independent investigation into Johnson’s killing. Terrance Sullivan, the organization’s director of racial justice, said, “Despite reports that a firearm was found after the fact, the footage available shows no clear indication that he posed an immediate threat that would justify the use of deadly force.”

“Nobody would call.”

The most viral part of Lucas’s testimony came when he moved from traffic enforcement to the bike stop that preceded Johnson’s death.

“I bet if I started riding my bike around with a gun on me, nobody would call,” he said, according to Atlanta Black Star.

Lucas also spoke directly about the imagery of the K-9 pursuit.

“As a white guy from the South, I gotta say that when I see a Black man running away having dogs sicced on them, it’s reminiscent of plantations of the Old South,” he said at the commission meeting.

The expired plates story forced a blunt question about enforcement.

The point of the testimony was that laws do not enforce themselves. People do.

If a white man can drive through several jurisdictions with invalid registration and never trigger police intervention, the issue then goes beyond whether a technical violation exists.

According to Black Information Network, Lucas told commissioners, “These are mine from a year ago, when I decided to start an experiment to see how long I, as a white dude, could drive around without them and not get pulled over.” He added that he drove “all the way across town five days a week” through “4 or 5 different police jurisdictions” and “was never stopped or questioned once.”

People of color are the primary victims of racial profiling in the U.S.

While Lucas’s experiment was clear, the numbers also support his claim.

Data from The Sentencing Project indicates that racial profiling in the U.S. disproportionately impacts Black and Latino individuals who the police detains and search at higher rates than white motorists. What’s more, despite these higher stop rates, officers are often less likely to find contraband on Black and Latino drivers. And roughly two-thirds of Americans believe police regularly use racial profiling.

For example, Black drivers are 20% more likely to be stopped than white drivers, and 50% more likely to be stopped multiple times.

And that’s only the case for drivers. In cities like New York City, 50% of pedestrians stopped by the police are Black, and 30% are Latino.

When it comes to technology, data also shows that facial recognition technology used by law enforcement disproportionately misidentifies people of color, leading to wrongful arrests.

In this sense, Amnesty International USA framed Johnson’s killing as part of a much broader history. “This killing does not exist in a vacuum,” Sullivan said. “Black communities in the United States have endured generations of discriminatory and violent policing — from slave patrols to modern-day over-policing and disproportionate use of force.”

Grand Rapids now faces another test of police accountability.

According to We Got This Covered, Johnson’s mother, Angelica Johnson, also spoke at the commission meeting. “What I need to know is, what are you guys going to do? When do we, the people, get the justice that we actually deserve? When do we stop electing people who promise us to do something different than the people before y’all?” she said.

In the end, Lucas’s expired plates may have revealed one kind of leniency. Johnson’s death revealed the opposite end of the same system. And the story, still viral after months, will continue to speak volumes.