What Could Go Wrong?

[dales]

Unarmed "traffic wardens" vs. possibly armed criminals.

How Berkeley could remove the police from traffic stops

Kellen Browning and Jill Cowan, New York Times 1:56 pm PDT, Thursday, July 9, 2020

The City Council will consider a proposal next week to prohibit the police officers from conducting traffic stops, shifting that responsibility to unarmed public works officials.

The Berkeley City Council will consider a proposal next week to prohibit the California city’s police officers from conducting traffic stops and shift that responsibility to unarmed public works officials.

The plan, which proponents and experts believe is the first of its kind nationwide, comes as cities around the United States are examining ways to scale back, re-imagine or defund their police departments after George Floyd’s death in police custody in Minneapolis in May, which led to a widespread Black Lives Matter protest movement.


“If we’re serious about transforming the country’s relationship with police, we have to start by taking on Americans’ most common interaction with law enforcement — traffic stops,” said Rigel Robinson, a Berkeley councilman who proposed the legislation that aims to de-escalate roadside situations. “Driving while Black shouldn’t be a crime.”


Data from a 2015 U.S. Department of Justice report show U.S. residents’ most common type of contact with police was being pulled over for a traffic stop, and research has found widespread racial bias in who gets pulled over.

Robinson’s proposal, which is co-sponsored by Mayor Jesse Arreguín and two other council members, would create a city department of transportation with unarmed public works officials who would conduct parking enforcement and stop cars for violations such as blowing through a stop sign or driving without headlights. It’s set to be considered at a Tuesday council meeting.

If passed, the legislation — first reported by The San Francisco Chronicle — would direct city staff to start examining the particulars of the pilot project, with a goal of implementing the change through the next fiscal year’s budget. Berkeley residents wouldn’t see a difference on the roads until next summer at the earliest, Robinson said.


“It’s a gargantuan task,” he said.

At least a dozen cities have introduced proposals to reduce police resources in some way, but Berkeley, which also approved a $9.2 million cut to its Police Department’s budget, appears to be the first to mull a change to officers’ traffic-related duties.

Supporters of the plan point to the cases of several high-profile deaths of Black people after traffic stops, including Philando Castile, who was pulled over for a broken brake light, and Sandra Bland, who failed to signal a lane change.

Darrell Owens, the co-executive of a local housing and transit activist organization called East Bay for Everyone, said he pitched the traffic plan to Robinson last month, along with another advocacy group called Walk Bike Berkeley. He said it’s a common-sense solution to police violence against Black people on the roads.

Owens said he remembered his father teaching him as a child how to avoid being killed by the police if he was ever pulled over in the car.

“There’s this cultural fear among Black people that it’s the traffic stop that’s going to get them killed,” he said. “Why does it always escalate into these violent situations?”

Ken Barone, a researcher at Central Connecticut State University who studies racial profiling in police traffic stops, said the Berkeley plan seemed to be “heading in the right direction.”

“It’s the kind of innovation that I think we need in this very challenging time,” Barone said.

When police officers are actively looking for “hazardous moving violations,” traffic stops can be effective deterrents, Barone said, and data have not shown evidence of racial bias. The problem, he said, is when law enforcement officials use minor offenses as pretexts to pull people over and search their cars.

In those cases, he said, Black and Hispanic drivers are stopped at a far greater rate, despite there being no evidence that such drivers are more likely to commit low-level driving violations.

Proponents of the legislation acknowledge there will still be a role for police officers on Berkeley streets, like if an unarmed official conducting a traffic stop is confronted by a violent person with a weapon.

“Those are real questions we’re going to have to answer along the way,” Robinson said.

A Berkeley Police Department spokesman declined to comment on the proposal. Robinson said he spoke with the city’s police chief Sunday but would not say what the reaction from the department has been.

“There will be pushback of one sort or another to any truly radical change that a city tries to adopt,” he said.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

[Darren]

Those people would have trouble running a kindergarten much less a city.

[MGMcAnick]

I don't know whether to reply to that with HUH or Duh.

Once upon a time I had job where every worker bee carried a notebook to write down real or imagined infractions of our coworkers. It's the only job I ever walked off MAD. I'd put up with them all of two weeks. I didn't hire on, nor was I trained to be a cop. My guess is public works folks didn't sign on to be cops either. I foresee a lot of immediate attrition.

[datsunaholic]

I don't think it would be the same public works people already out there restriping crosswalks and such.

Think of it this way... in many cities, the parking enforcement "officers" don't carry guns. They don't chase criminals. They don't run criminal background checks and look for outstanding warrants before writing a parking violation. Sometimes they do call in a tow truck if it's a repeat offender with lots of unpaid tickets. But they DO have to deal with irate parking scofflaws all the time. If things get too heated they call in backup.

The idea is to separate the duties that have our police forces doing too much. For the vast majority of normal moving violations, there is no need to send in armed police. For the majority of traffic accidents you don't need armed cops. Do people really need to fear for their life because they did a rolling "stop" at an entirely unoccupied intersection (not knowing they had a cop behind them?) Or because they have a burned out taillight they might not even know about? I've been pulled over for a burned out headlight ON MY WAY TO THE PARTS STORE! I've also been pulled over for complete BS reasons because the cop wanted to search my truck - here I am, an average white male and I had a cop with his hand on his gun yelling at me for no effing reason except that I was driving a rusty old beater in an industrial area at almost midnight. Oh, his excuse was he saw me throw a lit cigarette butt out my window... I don't smoke.