Pirate's Cove

This is what’s going around

It’s not that cut and dry, but, still stupid. Here’s the LA Times, obviously leftist and against the stops…until an employee is hurt because a pretextual stop didn’t happen and they say “why didn’t someone do something!”

Push to limit traffic stops passes City Council — but LAPD policy not changing yet

The Los Angeles City Council on Wednesday voted in favor of new restrictions on so-called “pretextual” traffic stops, signaling a growing impatience with the Police Commission’s failure to rein in a controversial LAPD tactic that critics say enables racial discrimination.

The vote was largely symbolic. It requests that the department’s all-civilian watchdog adopt new guidelines similar to San Francisco, which bars police officers from pulling people over for broken taillights and other minor equipment violations unless there is a safety threat.

If the new policy were adopted, LAPD officers would be prohibited from stopping motorists, bicyclists or pedestrians for minor violations “except in cases where the violation poses a significant and imminent safety risk.”

The unanimous vote followed sometimes emotional testimony at a City Council meeting from Angelenos about how their lives had been shaken by discriminatory traffic stops and searches.

Several speakers pointed to a growing body of research showing that minor stops disproportionately affect Black and brown motorists and do little to combat violent crime while eroding public trust. In recent years, there have been several high-profile traffic stops that resulted in officers or drivers being killed.

Um, if someone’s being pulled over for a minor infraction and a cop or driver is getting killed it rather substantiates that the driver, or someone in the car, was a very bad person.

The current LAPD policy, in place since 2022, requires officers to record themselves on their body-worn cameras stating the reasons for suspecting a more serious crime had occurred when making a stop for a minor infraction.

And Democrats now hate the use of body cams by police, because they expose bad behavior while exonerating officers.

[Police Commission and Chief Jim] McDonnell has publicly defended the stops as an essential law enforcement tool in the department’s fight against guns, gangs and drugs. He and some transportation safety advocates have argued that persistent traffic deaths — road fatalities have in recent years outpaced the number of homicides — indicate the city needs to crack down harder on reckless driving.

He surely knows a bit more than the Wokester LA City Council members.

(KTLA) According to a report released earlier this year by the Los Angeles Chief Legislative Analyst’s Office, LAPD officers conducted more than 72,000 pretextual stops between April 2022 and September 2025.

The report found roughly 30% of those stops led to evidence of another offense, including drugs or weapons.

Most cops do not have time to harass citizens these days. This is not the 60s and 70s where they harass blacks. They 99% of the time know what they’re doing when they do a pretextual stop. Los Angeles is down 1,000 cops from it’s target of 9,500. Overtime pay is about $1 billion a year because of this, and cops often do not have time to do pretextual stops unless they truly think something is going on

San Francisco, which has banned pretextual, is short 500 cops of their 2,074 staffing level. They do not have time. So, they ignore lots of bad road behavior

But the same report also showed that people perceived to be Black or Latino accounted for approximately 86% of all pretextual stops during that period.

For Liquan Hunt, whose father is an LAPD officer, the issue is deeply personal.

“Forty stops, two tickets,” Hunt told KTLA’s Lindsey Peña. “You’re getting pulled over for something else.”

Yeah, well, maybe there were reasons. And he was probably let off the most because your father is a cop and with warnings because something was wrong with his vehicle and/or the way he was driving. And, perhaps there are reasons blacks and Latinos are having this happen so much. How many Latinos are illegals and involved with gangs or not know how to drive well? How many times because since BLM blacks often seem to think that traffic rules do not apply to them? Admit it, you’ve seen this. But, you know, every experiment needs an experimental group, so, let’s see what happens if the Police Commission adopts this rule.

Pretextual stops are for things like expired tags, things hanging from rearview mirror (yes, that is an offense in most states), rear plate not visible (visible plates are required, you know), rear tail and brake lights not working (they signal intention when driving in a vehicle weighing several tons, right?), and failure to signal (signaling intention to pedestrians, bikers, and other motorists, you know), among others. Cops pretty much would no longer bother pulling over for this offenses for any reason, as has happened in San Francisco, which banned pretextual stops. Many times drivers would simply get a warning, now that behavior is ignored, making the roads more dangerous. And known gang members and smugglers know they can do what they want, just don’t do bigger violations.