As head of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, Vanita Gupta is the federal official in charge of investigating police departments for civil rights violations.
The stakes in a police stop can be high. What an officer discovers during a stop -- and how -- helps determine whether someone is allowed to carry on with their day, whether they’ll go to jail and even what type of evidence is used at trial.
He's one of the nation's foremost journalists on race and politics, but Jelani Cobb says he was surprised by what he saw while riding along with a police unit in Newark.
With police departments under scrutiny in the wake of high-profile shootings, some states are tightening laws to keep problem officers off the streets.