LA police officers now required to explain reasoning behind traffic stops

As part of a new policy adopted on Tuesday, Los Angeles police officers will now be required to explain their reasoning behind making a "pretextual stop" on their body cameras.

The new policy is aimed at preventing the LAPD from stopping people for minor infractions in an effort to initiate a larger investigation for larger crimes, according to Fox News.

The change was unanimously approved by the five person Los Angeles Police Commission.

According to an interdepartmental correspondence, "A pretextual or pretext stop is one where officers use reasonable suspicion or probable cause of a minor traffic or code violation (e.g., Municipal Code or Health and Safety Code) as a pretext to investigate another, more serious crime that is unrelated to that violation."

The new policy allows officers to conduct a pretextual stop if they are acting on "articulable information" in addition to a violation, and not just on a "mere hunch or on generalized characteristics."

These officers will be required to explain the reasoning for the stop on their body cameras, as well as record responses to questions posed by the person they stopped.

Failure to follow the procedure will result in "progressive discipline, beginning with counseling and retraining. Discipline shall escalate with successive violations of this" the interdepartmental correspondence reads.

The use of such stops was criticized by Commission President William Briggs, who said the stops often harm people of color.

"This revised policy will not result in more crimes, or more guns, or more lawlessness in the city of Los Angeles,” said Briggs, according to LAist. "The current policy harms our Black and Brown communities. The current policy does not stop crime."

The Los Angeles Police Protective League, the union that represents rank-and-file officers, said that these types of stops have resulted in thousands of firearms being taken off of the streets, adding that the stopping of the tactic is a threat to public safety.

"Police Commissioner Briggs should get off his soapbox, do his homework and tell the truth about pre-text stops and the important role they play in taking guns off our streets," a statement from the union's board read, according to Fox News. "Taking these guns off our streets through traffic and pedestrian stops saved lives. They prevented our residents from being shot, shot at, intimidated, victimized and murdered. It’s that simple."

They noted that in 2021, officers from the LAPD's Newton Division recovered 817 firearms during 726 incidents last year.

Of those incidents, 507 people were arrested in traffic stops, and another 115 were arrested in pedestrian stops.

In a letter addressed to the police commissioners board written by a coalition Black Lives Matter-LA and the ACLU of Southern California, they said that curtailing these stops "unless they’re 'intended to protect public safety' is incredibly vague and leaves wide-ranging operating room for more of the same racial profiling that’s been a hallmark of the Los Angeles Police Department."

"The proposal at hand recommends that members of the institution — whose racist practices have been repeatedly called into question — should now be entrusted to use their discretion to employ a tactic that is both ineffective and trauma-inducing on multiple levels."