The Los Angeles City Council Wednesday approved plans to try and prevent police officers from using traffic stops to catch people suspected of crimes while they are driving on city streets.
The council's 13-0 vote marks the beginning of a research project to collect information about how far the city can go to stop police officers from enforcing state traffic laws.
In particular, the council wants to halt “pretextual” traffic stops during which someone suspected of a crime is pulled over for breaking a less serious traffic law. Many of these pretextual stops have been used to recover illegal guns around the city.
The council said, with the intent to preserve a climate of trust in public institutions, it intends to create a new unarmed agency that will stop drivers and write tickets. These agents would be tasked with finding ways to help the city’s poorest communities, so they avoid facing fines or jail for car-related incidents.
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“Implementing unarmed traffic response leads to reductions in violent incidents and increases trust in public institutions,” said Councilmember Eunisses Hernández.
Since 2020, some members of the city council have held discussions about removing police from traffic stops and some other traditional roles, often citing this 2019 study on Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) stops that showed relatively few stops led to discoveries of illegal guns or more serious crimes.
In 2022, the police department adopted new more restrictive rules for pretext stops, requiring a higher threshold of suspicion and specific documentation by officers before and after.
“If done properly, they are valuable tools. If done improperly, it jeopardizes public trust, and I’m against that part of it,” LAPD Chief Dominic Choi said.
Those restrictions have reduced the number of traffic stops.
Choi said he has supported the idea that fewer stops make intervention more successful, saying that since the restrictions were implemented in 2022, officers have been finding more illegal guns while making fewer stops.
“Last year, we had one of the highest years in number of guns that were recovered and arrested, so I would say no., That policy has not thwarted that effort,” Choi said.
Some on the council say the success rate of the pretext stops shouldn’t matter.
“I know the amount of people that they catch – burglars and many other things through traffic stops,” Councilmember Marqueece Harris-Dawson said. “That doesn't make it a just or rational policy.”
The council’s vote Wednesday directs various agencies, departments, and officials to report back in the next few months on how all of this could work.
