March 8, 2025

Shifting traffic enforcement priorities and creating a culture of responsibility

PERF members,

This week I’m going to briefly highlight two recent stories that caught my eye.

D.C. to reduce traffic camera fines for low-income drivers, the latest move in a nationwide examination of traffic enforcement

The 51^st has an interesting report on a D.C. pilot program that will cut traffic camera fines in half for low-income drivers. This new program comes after the District drew headlines in 2020 for issuing more than $1 billion in traffic fines over a three-year period and was found to have the highest rate of traffic fines per capita among the nation’s 25 largest metropolitan areas.

 Yet, increased automated traffic enforcement in D.C. has not coincided with safer streets. In both 2023 and 2024, the city recorded 52 traffic fatalities, the highest total since 2007. At the same time, DC leaders were concerned that the fines associated with automated enforcement were having a disproportionate impact on the city’s poorest residents.

Traffic enforcement has been the topic of considerable discussion over the past few years, spurred by the COVID-19 pandemic and the unrest and demonstrations in the wake of the murder of George Floyd. Across the country, traffic enforcement declined dramatically during the pandemic, which coincided with a significant increase in traffic fatalities beginning in 2020. Both San Francisco and Seattle experienced a 90 percent drop in traffic citations between 2019 and 2023. Between 2019 and 2022, the Texas Department of Public Safety reported a 40 percent drop in vehicle stops. A similar decline was seen in Connecticut, which last month announced a $2 million initiative to increase police patrols on rural roads and deploy more advanced speed detection technology, such as radar, lidar, and speed indicator signs.

In 2022, Philadelphia became the first major American city to ban police stops for low-level offenses such as outdated registrations, broken taillights, and minor bumper damage. In the year following the implementation of this new law, traffic stops were down almost 7 percent. In 2024, traffic stops in the city rose by 20 percent compared to the previous year but were still well below their pre-pandemic level of 2019.

Last April, Philadelphia stepped up targeted traffic enforcement, with several initiatives focusing on aggressive drivers in the city’s most high-incident areas. The traffic plan is centered on three key steps: “reducing crashes and fatalities, deployment and visibility, and enforcement strategy.” Last August, after expanding their targeted traffic enforcement initiative into additional areas of the city, the Philadelphia Police Department reported an increase of almost 20,000 vehicle inspections, 9,000 traffic citations, and 800 cars confiscated from unlicensed or unregistered drivers compared to the previous year.

This January, Philadelphia’s mayor signed a bill to expand the city’s use of automated speed cameras. The city first employed this technology along a single busy corridor in 2020 in hopes of curbing speeding. That pilot program proved effective, reducing speeding violations on that roadway by 95 percent and pedestrian-involved crashes by 50 percent.

Another unique traffic enforcement challenge cities have faced since the pandemic is illegal street takeovers, which I have written about before.  These chaotic scenes can involve hundreds of vehicles all converging on a single location. They create a dilemma for chiefs as to what strategies work best for preventing these takeovers.

The Metropolitan Nashville Police Department has responded to these illegal takeovers by establishing a dedicated street racing enforcement task force. Since launching the initiative in 2020, the department has issued more than 980 citations and arrested more than 270 individuals through the program.

These and other efforts to reduce reckless driving are beginning to show some positive results. An early nationwide projection of traffic fatalities from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) shows a more than 4 percent decrease in deaths over the first nine months of 2024 compared to that same period in the previous year. This finding represents a continued decline in traffic fatalities since the spring of 2022 following a nearly 11 percent spike in deaths in 2021. These estimates come as preliminary data from the Federal Highway Administration shows a slight increase in vehicle miles traveled in 2024. Fewer traffic fatalities, even as the number of miles traveled has increased, is certainly an encouraging sign.

So, what does traffic enforcement look like in 2025? With the current staffing crisis across the country impacting how police departments use scarce resources, police administrators are looking at what should be the role of traffic enforcement.  What strategies and technologies can produce the greatest results while also recognizing and respecting the community’s wishes for safer streets without enforcement they view as overzealous or unfair?

On March 27, PERF will host a national forum to discuss current thinking about the role of traffic enforcement in public safety. I strongly encourage police chiefs and sheriffs to attend or send a representative. You can register here.

New York corrections case has significant implications

Against the backdrop of the New York corrections officers strike comes word that 15 corrections department employees have reportedly been suspended in connection with an inmate’s death, with their conduct described as “extremely disturbing.” And this comes on the heels of several corrections officers being charged with murder and other crimes in connection with another inmate’s alleged brutal beating in a New York State prison on December 9, 2024.  

Working in a prison is challenging on so many levels, but the video released in connection with the December 9th incident is hard to watch. What makes this incident even more troubling is that nobody did anything to stop it.   

I don’t believe that people who enter challenging public safety professions do so imagining that the acts caught on that video footage will ever be a part of their futures. No one sets out to become front-page news this way, but for 10 indicted corrections officers, that has become their reality.  We also can recall the violence that claimed the life of Tyre Nichols in Memphis, TN, another instance in which no one intervened. Five officers have been convicted of federal crimes related to his death. I can’t help but wonder how often a young officer witnesses something and feels uncomfortable speaking up until one day that officer just gives up and gradually becomes a part of the culture they once questioned.

This issue has long impacted police, and accurate or not, there is certainly a perception, confirmed by stories like these and others, that officers hesitate to step in to stop other officers from doing harm. I’m dating myself, but I remember the 1968 My Lai Massacre, which involved the murder of hundreds of unarmed civilians in Vietnam; the heartbreaking tragedy was made more troubling because commanding officers stood by and allowed it to occur. The same issue of deliberate supervisor indifference played out in the beating of Rodney King by members of the LAPD in 1991.

We focus on this issue in one of our ICAT modules — Step Up and Step In.

Importantly, ICAT is not only for police officers; we have also published guidance on minimizing the use of force in correctional facilities. We see over and over again how learning these skills can save lives and careers. A culture that embraces Step Up and Step In does not culminate in the type of unchecked violence captured on the Department of Corrections and Memphis videos — violence that leaves inmates and motorists dead, corrections officers indicted, and police officers convicted of federal crimes. As more agencies embrace a Step Up and Step In philosophy, I predict we will see fewer of these types of incidents.  

Have a wonderful weekend!

Best,

Chuck