What's the deal with motor vehicle violations?

I don't know how you can judge when or when race is not an important issue or a driving factor. When police are driving around in areas that they respect, they aren't looking for excuses to pat people down. In those situations, a stop for a tail light being broken is pretty much always going to be a warning unless you are stopped again two weeks later for the same thing.In other neighborhoods, traffic stops are simply opportunities to interact with drivers and possibly catch them riding dirty. Race might well go into the calculation of which situations and which neighborhoods draw which set of tactics.You've mentioned as a counter argument a hypothesis that police just want to multiply each stop by piling on as many offenses as possible. I wonder how you reach that conclusion and whether it is any more likely correct that any other explanations.

I guess what I want to talk about is that I think it's wrong that a routine traffic stop can be criminalized. Traffic cops should have no more power than meter maids. If the guy gets troublesome or threatening, call for support from the real cops. If the guy takes off, call in his license plate to the real cops. If he's going over 100 mph or some other very flagrant violation, call in the real cops.But the person pulling you over for failing to signal a lane change shouldn't have the power to arrest you. Even if you assault him. That person should call it in to the real cops and swear out a complaint for assault.Hopefully this will all become academic in the next 20 or so years as cars become more and more automated, as NosyNed mentioned earlier. A friend just got a new car that vibrates the seat (or was it the steering wheel) when you move out of your lane without signalling. Of course, this only works on roads with visible painted lines.Imagine a road system without posted speed limits, stop signs or traffic lights where car's computers negotiate passage wirelessly between themselves. Maintaining safe stopping distances would become a thing of the past as human reaction times become irrelevant. Highways could shrink the number of lanes because the lanes could be filled more efficiently, and automated rerouting of traffic would avoid traffic jams.And, of course, traffic violations would become a thing of the past.--Percy

I can dig it, back in Message 28 I wrote:

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Hell, I'll one-up you: We don't even need guys patrolling around making sure that we're obeying all the traffic laws. Not that there aren't any traffic areas at all that would benefit from direct observance, though.

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But in general, they can be more like the fire department. Just sit around and wait for people to call you when they need you.

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We don't need people following us around waiting for us to slip up, so they can then try to trick us into revoking our rights and/or committing additional crimes.

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But police work is also lucrative, so we're boned. And The People can't do anything about it. The whole system is fucked.

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I'm sure many municipalities would prefer to have traffic patrolled than not, and I like the idea of having a traffic patroller that is not a "real cop".There's plenty of issues with the idea, though. Like having to have more law enforcement personnel on the payroll. And also how you deal with a "real cop" that observes a moderate traffic violation and whether or not he can pull that person over despite the idea that he shouldn't. I doubt they'd want their abilities limited too much, just in case.Also, as you get towards smaller municipalities that only have a few cops employed then it'll be harder to keep the jobs separate. And then there's counties that just have sheriffs.Or look at the situation in St. Louis, where there's almost 100 municipalities that each have their own police forces, and who use those forces to use traffic tickets as a source of revenue. I'm not quite as optimistic about the timeline. While we might have automated cars soon, it's gonna take a long time to not have manual cars running around anymore.

How does your proposal prevent traffic stops from becoming criminalized? The meter maid is just going to call in someone else if you disobey his orders. How does that reduce arrests?

The meter maid style traffic officer wouldn't have the right to issue orders, other than to request license and registration, and I guess proof of insurance. Not being blessed with the same powers as regular officers there would never be a request to put out a cigarette, never any potential to escalate.If you feel this kind of traffic officer needs more power, make it financial. Add a check box to the ticket for non-cooperation that doubles the fines. I guess this has potential for abuse, too, but at least people won't end up in jail after a traffic stop. The goal isn't to reduce arrests. That's just a side effect. The goal is to reduce abuse of power.--Percy

Officers are allowed to ask people to exit vehicles because it is considered a safety issue. Perhaps that's one of the problems with a society awash with guns. If we could take guns out of the equation, a lot of things become more viable.In the small city in which I currently live, we don't have traffic police. We just have regular police in patrol cars. I see a secondary issue with having the real police staying in the office with only traffic dudes on the street. I suspect that regular folks who live in high crime neighborhoods like having the police drive by once in awhile.Not saying that those things are not solvable, but I see them as reasons for why things are as they are.

On a related note, Kitchener women say they were stopped by police for cycling topless. The officer (allegedly) lied about receiving complaints and then about why he stopped them.

Kudos to the officer, but I also feel sorry for the poor woman who was fed some sort of claptrap. I had no idea what she was talking about so looked up "free inhabitant" on the Internet, there's a lot out there, like this, here's an excerpt: The officer's patience was incredible. The video is a little confused just before he places her in handcuffs, but here's the dialog beginning a little bit before she gets out of the car: [Asgara provided information that allowed me to improve the transcript. Whereas before I thought the young lady was being asked to pick up her bag, she was actually being asked to take it off. Once I realized that then I also noticed that there's a break in the video. The immediately following paragraphs have been modified to take that into account.]The young lady's objections continue along these lines and she becomes verbally abusive as the officer handcuffs her, or at least it sounds like handcuffs. But there's also a break in the video just after the young lady announces that she will get out of the car. So before the break the officer says she will be free to leave once she gets out of the car, but after the break and she is out of the car he says she is not free to leave. Something happened in the portion of missing video that caused him to change his mind, and we don't know what that is.Except that nothing happened. Here's another copy of the video that doesn't have that break: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RB8katyjc9QNow I have a completely different interpretation. He said she would be free to leave once she exited the vehicle, but that she was approaching a "148 pc" violation. She the responded that she would exit the vehicle, then does exit the vehicle, but then the officer comes around to her side of the vehicle and informs her that she is not free to leave. What's up with that?The part of California statute "148 pc" that the officer refers to begins, "Every person who willfully resists, delays, or obstructs any public officer...," and you can guess where it goes from there.I find the officer's sudden decision to detain the young lady very puzzling, but he did display a great deal of patience before that point.--PercyEdited by Percy, : See bracketed notes in the text.

The real police would be out enforcing criminal laws, not traffic laws. They'd only get involved with traffic law enforcement when called in by the traffic police because a traffic stop or issue has escalated into a criminal category. There's no reason police crime patrols would stop.Here's another idea: For the moment forget my idea of adding a "traffic law enforcement only" division of the police. Instead, change traffic laws so that the police are not permitted to combine crime control activities with traffic stops. A traffic stop can only be a traffic stop and can only escalate under highly proscribed and well described situations. The officer making the stop should not be looking for other non-traffic related offenses. He can't remove you from the vehicle or arrest you except for certain types of offenses, like DUI, etc. He can't start questioning your immigration status, etc. This is a free country, nobody's a perfect driver, everybody gets pulled over at some point, and that's no excuse to turn it into a criminal exercise or witch hunt for other offenses. It is this police attitude of, "He has broken a traffic law, we therefore have to approach this person as if he might present a danger" that is likely behind the frequent escalations.Yesterday brought the indictment for murder of University of Cincinnati officer Ray Tensing after he shot and killed Samuel DuBose during a traffic stop for a missing front license plate. Tensing lied that he was being dragged, and another officer backed up his story. Unfortunately for Tensing he was wearing a body camera. This incident reveals the all-too-common police prevalence for slanting their stories in self-serving ways, and for their police comrades to back them up.Police are human, and human beings shouldn't be given the amount of power our police have, at least not for traffic stops. There's a greater good that they serve that makes it worth it for society to grant them this power, but it should only be granted for actual crime, not for traffic stops.--Percy

I took that part of the exchange as her having a shoulder bag on that he was asking her to take off, not pick up. He wanted her bag off so he could handcuff her.

Thanks for the info, I edited my message.--Percy

I thought you said that the regular police would stay in the police station kinda like firemen do?

You're thinking of Cat Sci in Message 28: He repeated this in Message 123.But I don't think we can assume there's just one best approach. Different approaches for different states, cities and towns, and as you mentioned, some places are sparse and have very small police departments.What's important to my mind is that it be next to impossible to criminalize a traffic stop. It is the threat of possible arrest that is responsible for all the legalistic advice in this thread about keeping interactions with police to a minimum at a traffic stop. It's a form of intimidation, it's a constraint upon free speech, and it's wrong.--Percy

In his editorial in today's NYT Matt Apuzzo writes about William J. Lewinski, a frequent defender at trial of police shootings. An illustration of one of his arguments for why police have to act before they can be sure they're in danger is this very brief gif showing a simulation of a man in a car with a handgun in the central console: But doesn't this argue that whenever a police officer cannot see the driver's right hand that he should shoot the driver immediately?If after pulling a car over an officer approaches the vehicle fearful that the driver might have a gun in the central console, this seems a recipe for traffic stops gone bad. On the other hand, police *are* very much at risk in traffic stops, as we saw just yesterday with the murder of a Memphis police officer.I have no answers - I'm just noting the problem.--Percy