Tag: Vehicle and Traffic Enforcement

Banning most low level traffic stops would deliver benefits to people, police and communities • Minnesota Reformer

Imagine a law that could make Minnesota’s roadways safer, reduce the number of dangerous interactions between the public and police, and help understaffed police departments. 

It seems too good to be true — but it’s not. 

In fact, a bill to do all of those things — by limiting when police can make traffic stops for low-level offenses — was introduced earlier this year by Rep. Cedrick Frazier, DFL-New Hope.

But the Legislature didn’t pass that bill, just like it didn’t pass similar bills in 2023, 2022 and 2021. Each delay has denied Minnesotans the benefits of safer roadways and communities.
— Read on minnesotareformer.com/2024/05/30/banning-most-low-level-traffic-stops-would-deliver-benefits-to-people-police-and-communities/

Saved by the Camera How New York Can Use Its Red-Light and Speed Cameras to Prevent Deadly Crashes

Introduction

New York City, enabled by state legislation, has long policed its roads with the help of cameras to catch vehicles running red lights and, more recently, breaking the speed limit. Such automated enforcement has helped the city reduce serious crashes by double-digit percentages, leading to a decline in fatal vehicle crashes from a modern high of 701 in 1990 to a modern low of 206 in 2018.

However, the city has not adequately used the data gleaned from red-light and speed camera tickets to help predict and thus prevent serious crashes. Reckless driving has increased since early 2020: by 2022, traffic deaths had risen to 261,2 27% above the low, thus reversing a decade of progress, before rising slightly in 2023, to 262. This increase in traffic deaths was part of a nationwide trend of reduced policing and spikes in antisocial behavior and violent deaths. The city sharply curtailed police traffic stops beginning in 2020, for example. That year, the city conducted only 510,000 stops—barely half the 985,000 stops recorded in 2019. Through November 2023, traffic stops had returned to just 70% of 2019 levels.

Get a .PDF copy here:

media4.manhattan-institute.org/wp-content/uploads/how-new-york-can-use-its-red-light-and-speed-cameras-to-prevent-deadly-crashes.pdf

Chicago traffic stops lead to gun charges for thousands | WBEZ Chicago

Critics say people arrested for gun possession during traffic stops are collateral damage in an ineffective police strategy to fight crime.

How else are police supposed to get to the guns in vehicles?
— Read on www.wbez.org/stories/chicago-traffic-stops-lead-to-gun-charges-for-thousands/febc8d42-0a50-4364-b817-135a808f99a1

America’s Traffic Laws Give Police Way Too Much Power | TIME

We’ll never know what Philando Castile was feeling when the police lights first flashed across his rearview mirror on a balmy night in the summer of 2016. But we can be reasonably certain of what he wasn’t feeling: surprise. The traffic stop—ostensibly for a broken tail light—that precipitated his tragic death, and captured the nation’s attention, was nothing out of the ordinary for Castile. It was in fact the 46th time he had been pulled over. And while this figure may seem shocking to some, there is sadly nothing aberrational about it.
— Read on time.com/6175852/pretextual-traffic-stops/

Watch: Mich. officer saves child in middle of traffic

AWESOME JOB as Officer Brendan Fraser springs into action to save a choking baby. This shows how police have to many times confront the unexpected.

As the officer pulled up behind a speeding car at a traffic light, the child’s mother hopped out of the car and screamed, “Help! We got a baby in here dying!”
— Read on www.police1.com/police-heroes/articles/watch-mich-officer-saves-child-in-middle-of-traffic-qKwmLbTRvpN5Lv9w/