by Will Jarrett and Eleni Balakrishnan : missionlocal – excerpt (include auto track)
Politicians and advocates today rallied at City Hall ahead of a vote that – if approved tonight – will prevent the police from pulling people over for certain kinds of traffic violations…
San Francisco Public Defender Mano Raju said that banning pretext stops would not only reduce racial discrimination in stops, but could make the city safer.
“Right now,” said Raju, “you end up with police spending their time on stops and searches that the data shows are not leading to something.” By eliminating these stops, he said, they could dedicate more time to dangerous violations such as running through red lights.
What is the policy exactly?
A version of this policy has been on the table since last summer. In its first iteration, it proposed that 18 types of stop be banned, but that list has since been chopped down to nine. Should the policy pass, people could no longer be pulled over for these reasons:
- Failure to properly display or mount license plates when the rear plate is still legible.
- Failure to display registration tags, or driving with a registration that expired over a year ago.
- Failure to illuminate license plates.
- Driving without one tail light, or driving without tail lights during the day.
- Driving with a missing or broken brake light.
- Affixing objects to windows or hanging objects from a rearview mirror.
- Failure to signal while turning or changing lanes.
- Sleeping in a car.
- All pedestrian stops, unless there is an immediate danger of a crash.
This newest iteration of the policy brings some substantive changes to the version that was tabled and discussed last month…(more)
No helpful link other than this is the new sfgovtv.org page that should have the link by date.