The progressive proposal in a city where car crashes kill more people than homicides was first hatched in 2020 after the cries of police brutality and racial injustice that led to nationwide rioting after the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
It has moved forward in “sluggish fits and starts” ever since, according to a report in Saturday’s Los Angeles Times.
Proponents say traffic enforcement could be done by unarmed civilian workers, instead of the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), a proposal that was bolstered by a 2023 study commissioned by the city.
However, the study found it would only be feasible with major infrastructure upgrades that improve safety on L.A. streets “that are among the nation’s deadliest,” according to reporting that year.
Improvements would have to include so-called “self-enforcing infrastructure” such as adding more speed bumps, roundabouts, and other street modifications that could help reduce speeding and unsafe driving.
In 2024, traffic collision deaths declined to 302 from 345 in 2023, but the count still well outnumbered the city’s 268 homicides, according to statistics compiled by LAPD.
There were also 170 pedestrians killed by vehicles in a city were very few crosswalks have traffic signals and motorists are expected to stop based on markings in the street or small signs curbside.
Los Angeles is also plagued by street racing and “flash mobs” where cars do “burnouts,” spinning at high speeds in circles only feet from revelers. Such typically predawn gatherings are sometimes followed by looting of local stores.
Angelinos also complain that traffic enforcement is already rare in many parts of the city where there is a lack of signal-controlled left-turn lanes, which routinely prompts cars to run red lights.
Even high-end communities like Brentwood and Malibu complain about groups of high-performance motorcycles and expensive sports cars blazing up and down iconic roadways like Sunset Boulevard and Pacific Coast Highway.
Last summer, the City Council asked for reports from various city departments to figure out how to implement the no cop enforcement and gave officials a three-month deadline, according to the Times. But more than 12 months later, those feasibility studies have yet to materialize.
“I’m very upset about the delay,” said Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson, one of the proposal’s early champions. “Generally speaking, when you try to do a big reform like this, at least some portion of the people who want to do the work are very motivated to change the status quo — and I don’t think we have that here.”
According to the Times, the LAPD has given the proposal mixed reviews:
Although top LAPD officials have in the past signaled a willingness to relinquish certain traffic duties, others inside the department have dismissed similar proposals as fanciful and argued the city needs to crack down harder on reckless driving at a time when traffic fatalities have outpaced homicides citywide.
Privately, some police supervisors and officers complain about what they see as left-leaning politicians and activists taking away an effective tool for helping to get guns and drugs off the streets. They argue that traffic stops — if conducted properly and constitutionally — are also a deterrent for erratic driving.
As city officials continue to wait for department reports to be completed, council president Harris-Dawson told the Times that he still sees a role for armed police in traffic enforcement.
“I don’t even think we need to be pulling people over at all for vehicle violations, especially for those that don’t pose any public safety risks,” he said, before adding, “If somebody’s going 90 miles an hour down Crenshaw Boulevard, that person does need to be stopped immediately and they do need to be stopped by somebody with a gun.”
Traffic emerges as a force of antagonism in contributor Lowell Cauffiel’s Los Angeles crime novel Below the Line. He is also the best-selling author of nine other crime novels and nonfiction titles. See lowellcauffiel.com for more.
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