https://www.sfchronicle.com/crime/article/sf-traffic-ticket-decline-data-
19383950.php

For ten years, as San Francisco leaders touted an ambitious Vision Zero
goal to end traffic fatalities, police eased back on ticketing drivers.

Citations plummeted, from 12,444 in March 2014 � two months after the
Police Department launched a crackdown to deter scofflaw drivers � to 336
in December 2023, according to city records.

The numbers are so stark that some frustrated observers wondered if
officers had retreated from a fundamental part of their job, giving people
the impression that road rage or speeding would go unpunished. Although
citation data alone cannot reveal whether risky driving has increased, it
points to a huge challenge for a city trying to make the roads safe for
everyone, and stumbling in the effort.

�We�re seeing driver behavior change, possibly in response to the lack of
enforcement,� said Supervisor Rafael Mandelman, who has spent years
pressing the Police Department for better results.

The Chronicle analyzed data on each type of infraction and found that some
types dipped so strikingly that they were virtually nonexistent by 2023.
Officers all but stopped penalizing bicycle offenses, which plunged from
1,583 in 2014 to seven in 2023. Similarly, pedestrians received 30
citations in 2023, down from 5,479 in 2014 as the department elevated a
more urgent priority to stop cars from hitting people.

Certain categories of motorist citations, such as for violating the
pedestrian right-of-way, also fell significantly, with 7,500 such tickets
in 2015, and 72 in 2023. Police have pledged to reverse that trend, noting
that right-of-way violations are a major contributor to injuries and
deaths.

From the perspective of law enforcement, the reasons behind that drop are
complicated. They range from purported staff shortages, to traffic
thinning out during pandemic lockdowns, to a 2015 state law that requires
officers to carefully document who they stop to guard against racial
profiling that some find onerous.

While police can�t control every factor, the department is trying to
course-correct by leaning into a strategy that would send patrols multiple
times a day to streets where crashes occur, in the vein of a fire crew
putting out spot fires. These operations would focus on the most dangerous
driving behaviors, such as speeding or running red lights. Department
command staff will present the plan on April 25, at a Board of
Supervisors committee hearing that Mandelman called. He said he�s open to
a variety of interventions � including lessening paperwork burdens if the
state would permit it.

Besides calling for more aggressive and consistent policing, city
officials have turned to a technological solution: automated speed
cameras, to be installed next year on the city�s most treacherous
arteries. Supporters of the cameras � including Mayor London Breed � see
them as a tool to supplement an overtaxed police force. In Mandelman�s
view, the cameras could become a centerpiece of street safety in San
Francisco.

The city already relies heavily on red light cameras, which have yielded
56,065 tickets since 2019, according to Police Department spokesperson
Evan Sernoffsky.

These developments come amid a fierce battle between San Francisco�s
police union and its Police Commission over whether to fundamentally
change traffic stops on city streets. In February, the commission passed a
measure restricting officers� ability to pull people over for minor
infractions, prompting immediate threats of lawsuits from the union. Law
enforcement have long treated low-level stops as an opportunity to uncover
more serious crimes; critics say that in reality, they�ve become a tool to
harass and intimidate motorists of color.

Experts on policing and racial disparity, such as UC Berkeley public
policy professor Jack Glaser, said the new restrictions would narrowly
apply to stops with little, if any, public safety benefit. Mandelman,
however, raised concern that limitations on �pretextual stops� would
become another encumbrance for officers, making their jobs �so much more
complicated, that they�re afraid to do anything.�

Concurrent efforts to pull back on some stops and devote more resources
toward others have brought the city to an inflection point. Pressure
mounted after a catastrophic crash in West Portal last month, in which a
woman drove her SUV onto a sidewalk and rammed into a bus stop, killing a
family of four. She has not been charged with a crime.

That split-second tragedy �really sobered people to the reality of how
reckless driving has become, and how vulnerable people are,� said Jodie
Medeiros, executive director of the pedestrian safety group Walk SF.

Some safety advocates say that even before the West Portal collision,
their outrage had reached a fever pitch. Data analyst Stephen Braitsch
conducted his own audit of police citations in 2022 and determined that
officers were only averaging about 10 a day. He publicized the results,
but felt that few in City Hall were listening.

�There�s no pressure on SFPD to prioritize� traffic safety, he said.

San Francisco could accomplish many of its goals, Medeiros and others
say, if police target resources at high-injury corridors and prioritize
the five driving violations that SFPD and the Municipal Transportation
Agency identified in 2012 as primary causes of collisions: speeding,
running red lights, running stop signs, failing to yield and violating
pedestrians� right of way.

Until 2020, the five main public safety violations accounted for about
half the citations that police issued in San Francisco. In recent years,
however, those infractions comprised a larger share of traffic stops in
the city� a sign that officers may be reducing stops that don�t promote
public safety.�There�s some good news in here,� said Glaser, the Berkeley
professor, as he scrutinized the city�s citation data.

Police say they have aligned with the advocates� vision, applying it to
the data-driven plan they will roll out this month. It hinges on
identifying the roads or intersections where crashes happen, and assigning
patrols to those locations. A targeted, �hot spot� approach to traffic
tickets, coupled with a highly visible police presence, should serve as a
deterrent to bad driving, Sernoffsky said.

S.F.�s most dangerous intersections are concentrated in one part of the
city

In his view, �a confluence of things� contributed to the steady decline in
traffic citations. He cited the 2015 racial justice law, which made each
stop longer and more labor-intensive � though police acknowledge the
importance of ending racial profiling, Sernoffsky said.

If added paperwork had a chilling effect, two events in 2020 caused a more
dramatic shift. One was the pandemic, which shut down businesses and led
fewer motorists to venture out, diminishing the number of interactions
with police. The second was the murder of George Floyd by an on-duty
police officer in Minneapolis, which prompted a moment of societal
reflection on policing � and inspired some officers to wind down
enforcement, Glaser said.

Meanwhile, drivers seemed to lose their inhibitions during the pandemic,
feeling suddenly emboldened to speed or careen through empty streets,
Medeiros said. By the time traffic returned, she added, rash driving had
become a new normal.

As the city reopened, San Francisco police had to contend with problems
that have affected law enforcement nationally: workforce attrition and
sluggish recruiting. All told, the department has 504 officer vacancies,
Sernoffsky said, adding that the traffic unit was among the hardest hit.
He believes stagnated traffic stops reflect the strain on labor. The city
reached a nadir in June 2022, when officers issued 192 tickets for moving
violations.

Currently the department has a staff of 46 in its traffic company � half
the unit�s size a decade ago. Given those labor constraints, the traffic
company has tried to be selective, relying on public feedback and Vision
Zero maps to decide where to deploy officers.

For a while, the results were difficult to measure. Speaking at a City
Hall hearing last September, Mandelman observed, in a puzzled tone, that
officers had veered away from writing tickets and were instead trying
softer intervention.

At �trouble spots� like the Valencia Street center bike lanes, officers
issued hundreds of warnings � a form of driver education that isn�t
captured in citation data. Glaser speculated that warnings might also
serve as a �release valve� for gratuitous stops that are actually a
pretext to search someone�s car; Sernoffsky countered that there is no
evidence of a correlation between warnings and searches.

Despite staffing struggles and changes in focus, citation numbers began
trending upward this year. Data published in the department�s monthly
Vision Zero progress reports shows 586 citations in January and 839 in
February, the most recent month for which data was available.

Breed projects the city will hire 200 officers within the next year, a mix
of new recruits and lateral hires from other departments, lured by
competitive salaries negotiated in the latest contract with the police
union. A new academy with 50 cadets will start in a month, a spokesperson
for the mayor said.

On 4/13/24 10:37, Leroy N. Soetoro wrote:
> https://www.sfchronicle.com/crime/article/sf-traffic-ticket-decline-data-
> 19383950.php
>
> For ten years, as San Francisco leaders touted an ambitious Vision Zero
> goal to end traffic fatalities, police eased back on ticketing drivers.
>
> Citations plummeted, from 12,444 in March 2014 — two months after the
> Police Department launched a crackdown to deter scofflaw drivers — to 336
> in December 2023, according to city records.
>
> The numbers are so stark that some frustrated observers wondered if
> officers had retreated from a fundamental part of their job, giving people
> the impression that road rage or speeding would go unpunished. -----
>

When you continue to ad burdens, and disincentives, you get less 'product'.