How are California police spending most of their time? It’s not responding to emergencies

Imagine you’re driving home from work. Car repairs, the cost of groceries and rent are on your mind. As you come to a stop, red and blue lights flash in the rearview mirror. An officer pulls you over and says one of your taillights is out.

Particularly if you’re a person of color, you fear what could happen next: interrogation, detention or maybe even losing your job or getting hurt or killed.

These fears are not unfounded.. Sheriff’s departments across California spend billions of dollars a year conducting pretextual stops, in which minor vehicle code violations are used to justify intrusive questioning and harassment and target people of color, according to a new report by Catalyst California (formerly Advancement Project California) and the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California.

Opinion

Many of us have largely accepted the idea that public funds spent on law enforcement keep us safe. In theory, officers fight crime and respond to calls for help when emergencies arise.

But our report, “Reimagining Community Safety in California: From Deadly and Expensive Sheriffs to Equity and Care-Centered Well-being,” debunks that. It shows, for example, that in 2019, 89% of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department’s patrol time was spent on stops initiated by officers rather than responding to calls for help. That means those stops ended up costing over $981 million in man-hours, while just $124 million was spent responding to community concerns. And of that $981 million, over $776 million was spent enforcing minor traffic violations.

This comports with research by the California Pan-Ethnic Health Network showing that California’s 58 counties and 482 cities annually spend over $25 billion on law enforcement and only $3.7 billion on public health. These exorbitant costs are approved by city and county governments despite evidence showing that investments in social services, health and education are more effective in preventing crime.

Law enforcement resources, as they’re used today, are more effective at targeting people of color than they are at preventing crime. In Sacramento County, for example, sheriff’s deputies are nearly five times more likely to stop a Black person for a traffic violation than they are a white person, even though drivers of color are not more likely to commit crimes than white motorists. Furthermore, over two-thirds of Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office patrol time is spent on officer-initiated traffic stops. This is not public safety; it’s waste.

It’s also harmful. People of color experience higher rates of psychological stress, physical trauma and dehumanization due to racially biased traffic stops. Over time, this creates generational trauma and mistrust of law enforcement.

Pretextual stops are the latest incarnation of vagrancy statutes, Black codes and Jim Crow laws, which were used to maintain racial hierarchies and economic stratification under the guise of “safety.” What’s different is that deputies on patrol today enjoy more resources and deeper entrenchment than ever before.

That’s why we need policymakers to stop funding racist and wasteful policing. Our leaders should ban pretextual traffic stops and invest in solutions that create true safety, such as urban and rural roadway design upgrades, education and healthcare, and green spaces and affordable housing.

Imagine this: Instead of a police officer stopping you for a broken taillight, an unarmed community member or city employee offers you a voucher to fix the taillight at no cost. That would effectively and safely address the vehicle issue while preventing further economic inequity caused by fees and fines imposed disproportionately on people of color.

Chauncee Smith is the senior manager of Reimagine Justice & Safety at Catalyst California. Eva Bitrán is a staff attorney at the ACLU of Southern California.