By Adam Pagnucco.
In my first post on Council Member Will Jawando’s bill to prohibit many traffic stops, I wrote: “It will be interesting to see how the executive branch, which has been increasingly concerned about crime, will respond.”
Well, it did not take long for that response to come, as Police Chief Marcus Jones condemned the bill on television. Following is a partial transcript of the chief’s March 1 interview on WJLA-TV in which news anchor Alison Starling asked him about the bill.
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Starling: So there’s this new bill there in your county, in Montgomery County, that would essentially stop police from making traffic stops for things like expired registrations, broken taillights, tinted windows, even possibly jaywalking, and we’re curious, what is your opinion on a bill that would be like this?
Chief Jones: So my opinion is that this is a bad bill, it’s bad legislation. This really does hamper our ability as police officers in the county to address safety issues as it relates to traffic safety and other issues that occur in our county. So I am totally against this bill. I have stated that I believe that this will not make our county safer. It will make it more dangerous. Similarly, when we talk about traffic safety, again, we focus on things that are some of the highest risk of our drivers in situations that are creating collisions in our county but, again, we have more traffic fatalities than we have homicides here in Montgomery County. And for us to then be hindered by people who have suspended license, who are driving without insurance, and all of the other aspects of this bill, I think it just lends us to not be in a safe place and I think it’s bad legislation.
Starling: And I guess supporters of the bill would say that by freeing up your officers from going after things that may be considered insignificant that it allows them to focus more on what would be more dangerous crime, but you don’t see that as the case.
Chief Jones: No, I don’t see that, because I think we allocate our work load, we are able to address situations… we are focused on many of the things that include, you know, finding individuals who are driving around with illegal guns in their cars. We’ve seized many guns over the past year as an example, and this increased environment that involves gun violence in our communities. So these are the things that we’re focused on. We’ll be able to still do our work in an effective manner and where our traffic focus is, again, in a fair and just manner.