(NewsNation) — Traffic enforcement was falling in several cities before the pandemic but now it’s practically nonexistent in some places.
In San Francisco, traffic citations issued by police have declined 90% since the pandemic, dropping from 42,971 in 2019 to 5,080 in 2023. Seattle has seen a similar drop-off in tickets.
It’s not just citations that are down; police traffic stops have also become less common.
In Portland, Oregon, police officers stopped 66% fewer drivers in 2022 compared to 2019. The Texas Department of Public Safety went from 2.8 million vehicle stops in 2019 to 1.7 million in 2022. In Connecticut, traffic stops fell by 40% over the same three-year period.
The pandemic pull-back coincided with a spike in traffic deaths, which jumped 10.5% in 2021 compared to the previous year — the largest percentage increase since 1975. That correlation has led some in the media to attribute the rise in fatal accidents directly to the decline in traffic enforcement. Other research has found no correlation between traffic stops and deadly car accidents.
There’s no single explanation for the decline in traffic stops. Instead, law enforcement experts say a combination of factors including staffing shortages, low morale and explicit policies banning police from enforcing certain violations are the main drivers.
Critics of traffic stops have long pointed to research that shows Black drivers are more likely to be stopped than their white peers relative to their share of the population. After George Floyd’s murder in 2020 and the Defund the Police Movement that followed, police scaled back.
“Across the nation, jurisdictions said, ‘OK, let’s rethink how involved we want police,'” said Jim Dudley, a 32-year veteran of the San Francisco Police Department who now teaches at San Francisco State University.
Some responded by curtailing what officers could and could not do at a traffic stop.
As of January, police officers in California, for example, are no longer allowed to ask: “Do you know why I pulled you over?” The law is intended to reduce “pretextual stops” where police use minor infractions as grounds to investigate a more serious crime.
Retired NYPD officer Jillian Snider said hostility against law enforcement has also contributed to the pullback.
“The increased violence against officers is serving as a deterrent for officers to go out there and do that proactive police work because they don’t want a situation to unfold and tragedy to occur for them,” said Snider, who now teaches at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice.
Just last month, NYPD officer Jonathan Diller was shot and killed during a traffic stop. The 31-year-old father left behind a wife and 1-year-old son.
From 2018 to 2023 the number of officers shot in the line of duty rose by 60%, according to the Fraternal Order of Police. So far this year, 10 officers have died while serving and 98 have been shot.
According to a 2021 survey of over 1,000 police officers, nearly 60% said they were less likely to stop a vehicle for violating traffic laws than they were before 2019.
Banning minor traffic violations, police staffing issues
Across the country, cities and states have enacted rules barring police from pulling over drivers for low-level offenses like expired tags or a broken taillight.
In 2021, Philadelphia became the first major city to do so. Since then, others like San Francisco and Minneapolis have adopted similar rules — all of which aim to reduce racial disparities in traffic enforcement.
At the state level, Virginia has passed a law limiting the type of stops police can make. Lawmakers in Illinois and Connecticut are considering similar proposals.
“If you have your whole community telling you, ‘we don’t want you to do this,’ and you’re really trying to facilitate a bigger partnership with them, this is something you’re going to have to consider,” said Snider.
Moving forward, Snider said communities and law enforcement will have to work together to find a compromise to keep streets safe.
Other efforts to curb traffic stops have faced pushback.
In Memphis — where traffic citations are down 34% since 2019 — the city council outlawed certain traffic stops after officers fatally beat Tyre Nichols in Jan. 2023. In March, Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee signed a bill rendering those changes null and void.
Dudley fears increasingly lax enforcement rules are empowering criminals.
“These guys know that once they step on the gas, and they start driving erratically, that nine times out of 10 they’re not going to be pursued by cops,” he said.
Ongoing staffing challenges have also changed the way departments approach traffic enforcement.
In Dec. 2020, police departments in Buffalo, New York, and Portland, Oregon, dissolved their traffic divisions and reassigned personnel elsewhere.
“With reduced staffing, traffic is one of the lower priorities of police work,” Dudley said.
When reached by email, a spokesperson for Portland Police said a wave of retirements in recent years has strained resources. During 2022, the department didn’t have a single officer assigned to a traffic division.
Last Summer, Portland reversed course and brought back the unit after fatal collisions surged to a three-decade high.
Less police could mean more cameras
Dudley and Snider don’t expect traffic stops to return to pre-pandemic levels, and both think technology will become more common.
“We will start seeing more heavy reliance on red light cameras, bus stop cameras,” Snider said. “We’re going to have to start seeing that just because we don’t have the manpower to have someone driving up and down an interstate.”
In March, California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced plans to install 480 new “high-tech” surveillance cameras in the city of Oakland and surrounding freeways to crack down on crime. Newsom said the technology will help law enforcement identify vehicles linked to crimes “using real-time information” and “alerts.”
San Francisco’s transportation agency plans to install 33 speed cameras early next year. Portland approved more red-light cameras in February.
According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, speed cameras can reduce roadway fatalities and injuries by 20% to 37%.
But tech-focused solutions may have drivers yearning for a time when humans were encouraged to use discretion.
In Chicago, the overwhelming majority of revenue from the city’s traffic cameras comes from drivers ticketed for going only 6-10 miles per hour over the limit. A ProPublica analysis found that traffic cameras in the windy city still disproportionately ticketed Black and Latino motorists.
