After George Floyd was killed in Minneapolis four years ago, reform advocates in Los Angeles called for an end to the city’s reliance on the police, with some urging city leaders to start by removing officers from traffic enforcement.
They pointed to persistent racial inequities in stops, searches and arrests that they say are the result of failed crime-control strategies in South Los Angeles that have marginalized Black and brown Angelenos for generations. They called on the city to limit how often police stop people for minor offenses and to begin imagining a future in which unarmed city officers take over most traffic duties.
This week, the City Council approved a study to find ways to do just that while increasing speed bumps, roundabouts and other roadway improvements to reduce speeding and dangerous driving.
“I think the city of Los Angeles can lead the country,” said City Council Member Marqueece Harris-Dawson, one of the proposal’s early champions.
The City Council voted 13-0 to direct city traffic officials and other departments to submit feasibility reports within 90 days on the costs and logistics of a series of proposals, including creating unarmed civilian teams to respond to specific traffic issues and investigate accidents, limiting fines in poor areas and ending the use of suspensions for minor infractions such as expired license plates or air fresheners hanging from rearview mirrors.
Wednesday’s vote was greeted with guarded optimism by supporters of the Push LA coalition, which includes the community coalition, Catalyst California and Black Lives Matter Los Angeles. They said this is a moment they’ve been waiting for. But they also said they’re worried about the long road ahead, riddled with bureaucratic hurdles that have stymied previous reform attempts.
Before the City Council meeting, several dozen organizers held a news conference and rally outside City Hall, holding signs and chanting slogans such as “A united people will never be defeated.” Activists such as Leslie Johnson of the Community Coalition vowed to keep up pressure on public officials to ensure the study findings are not suppressed.
They came to downtown Los Angeles to celebrate an expected victory, but also “to let Congress know we’re watching,” said Johnson, of a South Los Angeles group that promotes grassroots reform. Some speakers highlighted the deaths of Keenan Anderson and others killed in traffic accidents with local police, or bore testimony about the devastating effects of being stopped by police.
Interim City Manager Dominic Choi said Wednesday he would wait and evaluate what reforms the City Council proposes, but he said traffic enforcement, if implemented properly and constitutionally, is a good tool to help address violent crime in the area.
“Our job is to protect public safety, and we’re going to use the tools we’ve been given in any way we can to improve public safety,” he said. “So when restrictions are put on us, we’re going to be at roll call, we’re going to talk about this policy change, we’re going to talk about this law, we’re going to encourage our officers.”
The debate over what role police should play in policing road safety comes as the number of traffic deaths and injuries has soared for a year, and some road safety advocates say the city needs to do more to crack down on reckless driving, especially since crashes are more prevalent among pedestrians, cyclists and low-income neighborhoods.
At Wednesday’s meeting, some city council members said they see the proposal as a win-win, addressing road safety while also freeing officers to deal with more serious crimes.
The city’s roads remain among the most dangerous in the country.
Traffic fatalities hit a record high last year, with 336 people killed in accidents citywide, up from 312 in 2022, according to data from the Los Angeles Police Department. That’s the highest number since the city began keeping statistics more than two decades ago. More than half of the fatalities, 179 of them, were pedestrians. Serious injury accidents have also been on the rise in recent years.
While experts cite speed as a factor in many serious crashes, the Los Angeles Police Department’s application for increased traffic enforcement funding to the Department of Traffic Safety said the department has written 28% fewer tickets to dangerous drivers from 2021 to 2022, in part due to staffing cuts.
“We look forward to continuing our work with the Mayor, City Council and our partner agencies to advance these recommendations and keep all Angelenos safe,” Los Angeles Department of Transportation spokesman Colin Sweeney said in a statement.
In Los Angeles, like many other U.S. cities, calls for police overhaul have grown in the wake of Floyd’s killing in 2020, and officials have vowed to begin exploring ways to adopt new strategies to keep the community safe. The city’s transportation department has been ordered to produce a report on alternatives to traffic policing, a precursor to any legislation.
But after years of delays, early optimism has turned to anxiety and anger, as activists and some City Council members express concern that the window for fundamental reform is closing and that Los Angeles will fall further behind other cities that have already studied the issue.
When the study was finally released last year, it confirmed what many advocates have long argued: Los Angeles can follow the example of cities like Philadelphia and Berkeley that have scaled back police enforcement of many traffic violations, but that this must be done in tandem with major infrastructure upgrades that make roads safer.
“From our perspective, a new feasibility study isn’t necessary. There are many cities across the country that have already implemented a variety of reforms,” Chauncey Smith of the advocacy group Catalyst California said in an interview this week. “We’re focused on changing the situation, not punishing people for something they may or may not have done.”
He and other advocates cited a growing body of research from other cities that suggests road improvements along high-accident roads are more effective at changing driver behavior and ultimately reducing traffic deaths and serious injuries than the threat of a ticket. Instead of hiring more traffic cops, they said, the city should invest in improvements such as narrowing roads, adding bike lanes and more clearly marked pedestrian crossings.
At the same time, advocates say cities should consider sliding scale, “means-based” fee models that would help improve safety, such as mailing drivers vouchers to cover the cost of fixing a broken taillight, without unnecessarily criminalizing traffic violators or plunging them into debt.
Johnson, Smith and others also argued for a less punitive approach that doesn’t repeat the harm of past efforts, and a total ban on so-called pretext stops, in which police stop someone for a minor infraction in order to investigate whether a more serious crime may have occurred.
Police officials have curbed the practice in recent years under intense public pressure but have never abolished it, but further reforms may require legislation and are likely to face strong opposition from police unions such as the Los Angeles Police Protective League.
The association, which represents rank-and-file Los Angeles police officers, released a list of minor calls that it believes don’t require police intervention. Traffic violations were not included. LAPD leaders have signaled a willingness to abandon certain traffic-related tasks in the past, but other law enforcement experts have dismissed similar proposals as unrealistic, especially at a time when sometimes dangerous behavior such as street smuggling and illegal racing has increased.
A 2022 survey of Los Angeles residents by Loyola Marymount University showed that public opinion is sharply divided on whether to use unarmed traffic officers or another alternative approach, such as civilian response teams, to deal with traffic issues.
City News Service contributed to this report.