LOS ANGELES _ The Chrysler sedan was parked illegally against a red curb on West Manchester Avenue shortly after nightfall when a man walked up to the front passenger window, then retreated.
To the two officers from the Los Angeles Police Department's elite Metropolitan Division in an unmarked Crown Victoria, it looked like a possible drug deal.
They asked a black man in a Raiders hoodie and a black woman in a denim jacket to step out of the car. As the pair stood facing a metal fence, the officers patted them down.
After a Los Angeles Times investigation showing that Metro pulled over black drivers at a rate more than five times their share of the city's population, Mayor Eric Garcetti in early February ordered the LAPD to scale back on vehicle stops like this one.
At Metro's Temple Street headquarters, the Times article and mayor's directive caused an uproar. Metro officers felt they were being maligned as racists for policing a part of the city where almost everyone is black or Latino.
On the ground with Metro in South L.A., the realities are more complex than statistics can capture, with decisions about which drivers to stop shaped by years of experience with possible crime indicators, from the man walking up to a parked car to the paper license plates sometimes used to hide a car's origins.
As a mobile strike force responding to flare-ups and tamping down gang wars, Metro remains a key player in the LAPD's crime-reduction strategy.
Despite the mayor's directive, much of the work of Metro's crime suppression squads still revolves around pulling over motorists to root out criminal suspects, illegal guns and contraband.
But with a progressive mayor and perhaps the city's most progressive police chief ever, the LAPD is under unprecedented pressure to pull back from tactics like vehicle stops and data policing that carry implications of racial bias.
As the city heads into the summer, a prime season for violence, this new way of policing will be tested. Homicides and shootings have already surged in the last month or so, claiming more than a dozen lives, including rap star Nipsey Hussle.
LAPD officials warn that if Metro withdraws from South L.A., as some community groups are demanding, lives will be lost.
"We're trying to stop drive-by shootings," said Capt. Jonathan Tippet, who leads Metro. "If we're not here, it's going to have a negative impact and allow people to go back to committing crime. If we're not here to keep the peace, we're going to have bloodshed."
While filling out paperwork documenting the stop of the white Chrysler, the officers explained their actions to a Times reporter.
The parking violation and suspected narcotics transaction provided a legal reason to approach the car, said Amanda Lankford, one of the few female officers in Metro.
She and her partner, Julio Lopez, asked everyone in the car to step out because the back window was tinted, and it was unclear who was inside, Lankford said. The officers asked them for permission to pat them down because drug dealers are sometimes armed.
After finding nothing suspicious, they explained the reason for the stop to the driver and passenger and completed "field interview" cards that help the LAPD keep track of the people they encounter.
They let the pair go with a written warning for the parking violation.
"It turned out to be nothing, but we didn't know that until we stopped them and investigated further," Lankford said.
