Good morning LA It’s February 24th.
Yesterday, the LA City Council took a step towards removing armed officers to make routine traffic stops, vote to direct various city agencies to explore alternatives.
After yesterday’s vote, the prosecutor and others are now tasked with soliciting proposals from consultants to study the feasibility of inspecting unarmed traffic, including analyzes of current state and local traffic laws and comparable programs across the country.
The Los Angeles Department of Transportation is tasked with soliciting feedback from communities, and the Los Angeles Police Department is required to provide data on the most frequently cited traffic violations and the “gender and ethnicity of those cited or arrested”.
The motion was filed in June by Councilors Marqueece Harris-Dawson, Mike Bonin, Curren Price and Herb Wesson, and condemns the treatment of black and Latin angelenos in the hands of the police, specifically during traffic stops for what are typically minor infractions.
“Law enforcement agencies across the country and here in Los Angeles have has long used small traffic violations as a pretext to harass vulnerable road users and profile people of color ” wrote the authors of the motion. “From reckless quotes in Downtown and Skid Row to the operations of the Metropolitan Division in South LA, the Los Angeles Police Department’s history of misuse of traffic enforcement has sparked decades of mistrust in black communities that ultimately undermine the real road safety initiatives.
Berkeley put forward a similar strategy last summer, and officials in Cambridge, Mass. considered one too. Elected officials in other cities – including San Diego – have spoken out against so-called pretext stops, in which police officers stop a driver for a minor offense as a pretext to investigate something else
Harris-Dawson adviser told LAist last year that part of the problem is that voters and taxpayers chose to let the police deal with a ridiculously wide range of social challenges.
“You have armed policemen directing traffic, you have them reporting after accidents, you have resolving discussions between children after school,” he said. “They ended up in many of those circumstances because we sent them there.”
The data supports the claim that traffic stops disproportionately affect drivers of color. Like my colleague Robert Garrova writes, a recent report by the inspector general of the Los Angeles Police Commission concluded that 27% of people stopped by police in 2019 were black, in a city where blacks represent only 9% of the population.
Keep reading to learn more about what’s happening in LA todayand stay safe outside.
What else you need to know today
Before you go… 22 great SoCal coffee subscriptions from local independent roasters
It is 6:30 am on day 351 of the coronavirus pandemic. You wake up dizzy and stagger to the kitchen, desperate for the bump that only coffee can provide. But where are the beans? The grinder? What is even a cup?
Maybe if you had a coffee subscription service, things would be a little easier.
From accessible to exclusive, we find almost two dozen independent companies in Los Angeles and Orange counties that offer coffee and club subscriptions. Some have several cafes, while others sell directly to customers, without a physical space. A club offers a rotating selection of local roasters, including several that do not offer their own subscriptions. And many more.
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