In 2020, there were 6 cops who were killed in the line of duty during traffic stops. Is it possible, even probable, that if my proposal were implemented we would see an increase in that number? Of course is it. But we’d also see a decrease in tragedies like Daunte Wright and Philando Castile. If it leads to a net decrease in deaths, and a better public perception of the police, it may be a worthwhile tradeoff to make.
I don’t believe in disarming the police but there’s some studies out that suggest that traffic stops aren’t a big source of arrests that solve more serious crimes (cite), and they are also relatively safe (1 in 6.5 million stops ends in an officer fatality (cite)).
That being said I think the idea shouldn’t be to “disarm traffic cops”, like I said earlier very few police do nothing other than traffic enforcement. What you could do is create a parallel civil traffic enforcement agency that doesn’t carry firearms and aren’t sworn law enforcement officers. LEOs would still have the ability/authority to stop someone in a car if they had probable cause a crime was being committed, but would have instructions to exclude cases where the only crime is a moving violation / equipment / registration violation. The civil traffic enforcement agency should also properly avoid even stopping people unless necessary. There’s a lot of moving violations and registration shit where you could just have an automated camera system running that captures the car and then sends a fine to the owner’s registered address.
The automated camera systems receive a lot of backlash as just revenue generation with no effect (or even a detrimental effect) on public safety. I can’t really think of any moving violations where the camera is helpful in any way and won’t just be despised by the public.
I mean then should we have car registrations and moving violations at all? Car registrations in part are revenue generation to pay for the government costs of providing a transportation system, and fines for not renewing the registration are designed to enforce compliance. Moving violations are generally designed to promote safe driving. If we aren’t even willing to fine people in a non-confrontational way for breaking these laws might as well just remove them from the books and just raise gas taxes 40%.
Well part of the problem (besides the fact that so much money was siphoned off by companies like Redflex and the yellows were shortened to make more violations happen) is that the cameras are very good at enforcing laws against behavior that isn’t seen as really a problem. Speed cameras and red light cameras generally punish behavior that people also wouldn’t support cops enforcing. Even less so since generally the nature of how such automated enforcement is handled is that it can’t be assessed against the driver in terms of points or the like and is purely a fine.
The best you can argue is that red light cameras might somewhat reduce mid-intersection t-bone accidents where people enter the intersection well after the change. The moving violations people around here worry about is the illegal drag racing on city streets and drunks, not somebody mistiming the length of a yellow versus their speed and distance or doing 45 in a 40.
Make that 400% and I think we’ll get somewhere.
I think it would help if traffic cops focused on actual unsafe driving and stopped doing all pretext stops. Every day during my morning and afternoon commutes I feel like I’m taking my life into my own hands. But yet is seems like rather than focusing on stopping maniacs on the freeway, the cops are setting up registration checkpoints or stopping someone for doing 21 in a 20 MPH school zone that was set up as a speed trap. It makes no sense to me. My guess is that even a young or middle aged Black man has a higher risk of dying in a traffic accident than of being killed by someone like Derek Chauvin. Stop the pretext stops, increase enforcement against dangerous drivers, and everybody wins.
Sounds like a good idea. I’m sure the criminals will politely wait for the officer to go back to his squad car and retrieve his weapon before starting a gun battle with the officer. Because criminals are such nice, fair, pleasant people.
I’m also sure that criminals will in no way take it as carte blanche just to murder the cop every time they get pulled over and don’t feel like going to jail that day since they know the cop is defenseless. Because criminals are such nice, fair, pleasant people.
I’m guessing you watch lots of television. Post 62 provided a cite of how very rarely police are killed or assaulted during routine stops. Mind you not zero but very small … and there is no specific reason to believe that an approach with hand on gun or gun in holster reduces those rare events over a no lethal weapon on hand approach.
OTOH we have all become painfully aware of the large number of fatalities of car occupants that occur by way of mistakes in judgement or process by police making traffic stops with lethal force at the ready.
Now, now, let’s use our brains here. You are a criminal in a world where highway patrol officers are unarmed. You get pulled over and decide to murder the highway patrol officers. What happens next? Do you:
- kill the officer and go home to live happily ever after with no consequences
- get caught by the armed part of the police force since the highway patrol officer radioed in your plates
Outside of some wild west/grand theft auto fantasy scenario, you’re in a hell of a lot more trouble now than you were before you killed a cop. The incentive to murder the cop really isn’t any bigger if the cop is unarmed.
Of course, if you’re an unarmed highway patrolman in pursuit of a known armed and dangerous suspect, you wait for armed backup.
IMHO,
- Whatever the rate is of attacks on LEOs during traffic stops, ISTM that it would inexorably rise if traffic stops were conducted by LEOs who were (known to be) unarmed
- It’s important to look a bit more closely into the data from a link in post #62:
I reviewed a comprehensive dataset of thousands of traffic stops that resulted in violence against officers across more than 200 law enforcement agencies in Florida over a 10-year period.
How randomized is this ? How good a sample ? What kind of confidence interval would this sample give us ?
Under a conservative estimate, the rate for a felonious killing of an officer during a routine traffic stop was only 1 in every 6.5 million stops, the rate for an assault resulting in serious injury to an officer was only 1 in every 361,111 stops, and the rate for an assault against officers (whether it results in injury or not) was only 1 in every 6,959 stops.
IMHO, a cop’s death isn’t the only endpoint that decent human beings who are not cops should be concerned with.
Extrapolating a bit here … the difference between the study’s “assault,” “assault resulting in serious injury to an officer,” and “felonious killing” is probably some combination of the lethality of the person pulled over and the ability of the LEO to defend him/herself.
Even if, arguendo, disarming traffic cops doesn’t inherently raise the homicidal tendency of the average motorist pulled over for a traffic stop, what impact does it have on the LEO-defense side of the equation ?
So what would the likely impact be on:
- “felonious killing of an officer during a routine traffic stop”
- “assault resulting in serious injury to an officer”
- “assault against officers (whether it results in injury or not)”
?
There’s a ‘conversion factor’ here that’s reminiscent of why so many more people come back from war with grievous injuries than ever before: we can save them on the battlefield where, previously, they were dead.
Cops being able to defend themselves keeps the ‘conversion rate’ from assault-on-cop to cop fatality relatively low.
If this is a zero-sum game (ie, more cops get hurt or killed so that more combative drivers aren’t), then, again, I’ll pass on this one.
If my take on this is misguided, I’d be grateful for somebody enlightening me.
ETA: I used to have an RV. On RV forums (surprise !) there were endless debates about keeping a gun in your RV. The pro-gun RVers often said, “Then why not put a sticker on your RV door that reads, ‘NO GUN IN THIS RV.’”
It’s not a bad point.
nope I don’t agree you need guns or some of protection when pulling people over.
(Sorry in advance for the long and sort of rambling post.)
There is an assumption here that not only would Traffic Safety Officers not be issued weapons, but that it would be Against The Rules for them to even have weapons. That’s probably a correct assumption, as far as it goes–that’s probably how it would be set up–but it doesn’t actually have to be that way.
We could say “Traffic Safety Officers are not sworn Law Enforcement Officers; they have no general powers of arrest, and only limited powers to briefly detain motorists on public streets and highways in order to issue tickets for infractions for minor moving violations or equipment issues. Traffic Safety Officers are not issued with any sort of firearm. Like any other non-criminal citizen of [nearly all U.S. states], if a Traffic Safety Officer wishes to do so, they may apply for a Concealed Carry Permit and carry a weapon for self defense.” (We could also specify that, even if the laws of a particular state normally allow for “open carry”, as a condition of employment Traffic Safety Officers must carry any weapons only in a way that is concealed from normal view, because we want to sharply differentiate between public interactions with Traffic Safety Officers, and public interactions with Law Enforcement Officers.)
Basically, we could put Traffic Safety Officers on the same footing as Uber drivers, or pizza delivery guys, or any other non-police/non-criminal citizen. If a Traffic Safety Officer believes that being armed will improve their safety, then they could take steps to arm themselves. If a Traffic Safety Officer believes that carrying a gun would be more likely to cause trouble then prevent it, then they could choose not to carry a gun.
In general, I think the dynamics of a stop by a non-police Traffic Safety Officer would be very different from the dynamics of a routine traffic stop by a police officer. Even a very routine stop, when it’s done by a police officer, could result in life-altering consequences for the person being stopped–that person could be put in handcuffs and taken to jail, and eventually wind up going to prison for years and years. The reason why Mr. Bad Guy is maybe going to shoot the police officer who just pulled him over for doing 49 MPH in a 45 zone, or having an air freshener hanging from his rear-view mirror, is not that Mr. Bad Guy is terrified at getting a traffic ticket. It’s that Mr. Bad Guy suspects (likely correctly) that the real reason he’s being pulled over is so Officer Friendly can get a chance to poke around in his car to the maximum extent possible. As soon as Officer Friendly spots the drugs or the duffel bag full of severed heads or whatever, the “routine traffic stop” will immediately escalate to a full-on felony arrest. In fact, quite a lot of routine traffic stops are done, NOT for the purposes of enforcing traffic laws, but specifically for the purpose of “catching criminals”. But it’s precisely these kinds of “pretextual stops” that a lot of people are increasingly questioning the value of. Are we actually catching enough “real” criminals to justify having armed police officers pull over large numbers of people for (ostensibly) very minor traffic infractions? Especially given that a lot of these “real” criminals are merely on the wrong side of the War on Drugs (and are not actually driving around with a bunch of severed human heads); and given the racial (and class) disparities of who gets pulled over so the cops can “check them out”, and who doesn’t.
IF we did institute “Traffic Safety Officers”, I think it would be necessary to clearly distinguish them from regular police. Around here, police cars nearly always have flashing blue lights; other emergency vehicles (fire trucks and ambulances) have flashing red lights; and tow trucks and utility vehicles and so on have flashing yellow lights. Maybe we could give the Traffic Safety Officers flashing green lights. Then:
- You see flashing red lights in the rear-view mirror, get the hell out of the way.
- You see flashing blue lights in the rear-view mirror, you are in potentially Big Trouble. (Or, just get the hell out of the way and let the cop by so he can respond to that serious act of criminality or life-threatening emergency up that-a-way.)
- You see flashing green lights in the rear-view mirror, you made a boo-boo. You’re going to get a “ticket”, and have to pay a modest fine. Or maybe just a “fix-it ticket”–get that malfunctioning tail-light you didn’t even know about repaired, and you won’t even have to pay the fine. Presumably Traffic Safety Officers could also issue warnings if they were in a good mood, just to get people to slow down a bit and pay more attention to your speed there, sir.
We presumably would still have armed Law Enforcement Officers driving around “patrolling”. In addition to responding to calls, if they saw someone doing something in a car that is clearly beyond the level of a “traffic ticket”–someone is blasting down the highway at 100 MPH, weaving across three or four lanes of traffic–the regular cops could still flip on the blue lights and arrest them. At some point, even now, “traffic offenses” cease to be “You’re going to get a ticket”, and become “You are going to jail, right now” (for Reckless Endangerment or DUI or some such). Law Enforcement Officers could still stop cars if the license plate and description match that of a car that was reported stolen yesterday, or that eyewitnesses reported was the getaway car in a daring jewel heist. If a Traffic Safety Officer saw someone who appeared to be committing an actual crime–DUI or something like that, not just speeding–we would surely have it set up where they would have good lines of communication with the Law Enforcement Officers, and could quickly and easily call it in. Traffic Safety Officers would probably also be able to “run plates”, and could also call in cars that have been reported to have been stolen, so that the Law Enforcement Officers could respond and deal with these more serious issues.
But normally, Traffic Safety Officers would, in fact, concentrate only on actual traffic safety. They’d cite people who are driving like jerks, or are merely being careless or inattentive, or who just have a malfunctioning tail light. They wouldn’t be trying to catch robbers and murderers, any more than parking enforcement officers (“meter maids”) are.
(The issue of some communities using enforcement of what are ostensibly “traffic safety” rules purely as a revenue center is probably a different issue, and I doubt this idea would stop that from happening. Traffic Safety Officers would be at least as susceptible as sworn Law Enforcement Officers are to being pressured to “produce”, if you know what I mean, rather than actually doing the job of keeping traffic moving in a safe and orderly fashion.)
I think your proposal is fantastic and wholeheartedly support it. Though I definitely disagree with the idea that these traffic safety officers should be allowed to carry a firearm of their own while interacting with the public in an official capacity.
In my state and many others, any adult who can legally own a gun can carry one in public openly or concealed without a permit. How would such a rule work in these states? Everyone can carry a gun EXCEPT traffic cops?
Also–more generally–what are these unarmed traffic cops supposed to do when writing a speeding ticket (say 25mph over) and notice contraband (drugs, machine guns, robbery proceeds, a person tied up) in plain view? What if the driver matches the description of a recent bank robber and is acting nervous, stuffing things in the glove box?
It seems to me as if this proposal would stop a grand total of ONE accidental shooting in my memory, put traffic cops’ lives in extreme danger, and make our roadways a lawless zone for criminals to carry out all sorts of crimes with impunity. I hate pretext stops as much as anyone, but they are constitutional (a 9-0 opinion in Whren v. United States) and traffic stops uncover other very serious criminal violations which deal with life and property. I think this proposal is seriously misguided.
Traffic officers can do whatever they want (within the law of course) on their own time. When they’re on the clock, they have to follow department policy. You can own a gun in my state too, but if one of my coworkers came into the office armed, they’d be fired immediately.
Then they can call for armed backup.
Then your memory isn’t very good
If only someone could invent a device that could emit and receive electromagnetic waves and turn them into sounds! Then traffic officers could call in backup from armed law enforcement officers if needed. Sadly, such a fantastic device is likely to forever remain beyond human understanding.
Ahhh, the US constitution - the only arbitrer of morality known to man! This perfect document would NEVER place one man’s right to property above another’s right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, no matter the color of their skin!
This makes no sense. The state says anyone can carry a gun, but not you, you have to call for another person… with a gun, no less. What makes the called person better with a gun than the first? Just let the first person carry a gun in the first instance.
That’s not at all what the state says. The state may say you, a civilian, are allowed to carry a gun, but if you decided you were Batman and started hunting down criminals, you’d go to jail. By that same token, if Mr Traffic Officer wants to carry a gun when he goes to the farmer market with his young daughter in case ninja assassins attack, that’s an entirely separate conversation than whether he should use a gun as a law enforcement tool while pulling people over to write them a speeding ticket.
That’s a loaded question that shows you’ve missed the point. Traffic Officer’s job isn’t to fight crime, it’s to write tickets. A gun isn’t necessary for a routine traffic stop. The presence of a gun changes the equation, makes the whole situation a lot more dangerous and tense, and potentially deadly. So the unarmed officer is better qualified for the task of a routine traffic stop by the very fact that he is unarmed.
If the situation changes and we are no longer dealing with a routine traffic stop where a gun isn’t required, Traffic Officer shouldn’t play Rambo; he should pull back and call for backup.
Sadly, this snark illustrates that this isn’t about what is good policing, but seems to be another guns=bad discussion.
And then, the kidnapping victim rides around tied up in the back seat for a few more days because the traffic cop, who could have carried a gun at the farmers market, cannot carry a gun where he is far more likely to encounter dangerous criminals. And it will only be a few more days if someone identifies the car as the kidnappers’ car, is able to summon the armed police, and not another unarmed cop at a traffic stop who must again back away.
I respectfully suggest that you have missed the point. Traffic enforcement is indeed a valuable tool to fight crime because of additional crimes that police witness during traffic stops. Those additional crimes require a gun in many situations.
were you a big fan of “stop and frisk” too?