After the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) and the Los Angeles Police Commission updated a policy earlier this year to restrict officers’ ability to make traffic stops, critics say doing so has led to an uptick in crime.
At issue is what’s known as pretextual stop, or a traffic stop conducted by a police officer on suspicion of a larger crime at play.
The practice has allowed officers to pull drivers over for mundane reasons—a broken taillight or an expired registration, for example—in order to justify a vehicle search.
However, after the death of George Floyd in 2020, calls by activists and some politicians for police reform—including doing away with such pretextual stops—were heard in police departments across the country….