Los Angeles City Council wants LAPD to end 'pretext stops'

The Los Angeles City Council on Wednesday approved a plan to prevent police officers from using traffic stops to arrest people suspected of crimes while they are driving on city streets.

The council’s 13-0 vote marks the start of a research project to collect information on how far the city can go to prevent police officers from enforcing state traffic laws.

The Council wishes in particular to put an end to “pretext” road checks during which a person suspected of an offense is arrested for having violated a less serious traffic code. Many of these pretext stops were used to recover illegal weapons in the city.

The council said that with the intention of preserving a climate of trust in public institutions, it intended to create a new, unarmed agency that would stop drivers and write tickets. These officers would be tasked with finding ways to help the city’s poorer communities, to avoid facing fines or jail time for car-related incidents.

“Implementing unarmed intervention in traffic leads to a reduction in violent incidents and increases trust in public institutions,” said Councilor Eunisses Hernández.

Since 2020, some City Council members have led discussions about removing police from traffic stops and some other traditional roles, often citing this 2019 study of stops by the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) which showed that relatively few checks led to the discovery of illegal weapons or more serious crimes.

In 2022, police adopted new, more restrictive rules for pretext stops, requiring a higher threshold of suspicion and specific documentation from officers before and after.

“If done correctly, these are valuable tools. If this is not done correctly, it jeopardizes the public trust, and I am against this part of the project,” said LAPD Chief Dominic Choi.

These restrictions have reduced the number of traffic stops.

Choi said he supports the idea that fewer checks make the response more effective, saying that since the restrictions were implemented in 2022, officers have found more illegal guns while conducting fewer checks.

“Last year we had one of the highest years in terms of the number of guns recovered and arrested, so I would say no. This policy did not thwart that effort,” Choi said.

Some council members believe the success rate of pretext stops should not matter.

“I know the number of people they catch – burglars and many other things during traffic stops,” said Councilman Marqueece Harris-Dawson. “That doesn’t make it a fair or rational policy.”

The council’s vote Wednesday directs various agencies, departments and officials to report back in the coming months on how it might all work.