By Adam Pagnucco.
Today, the Montgomery County Police Department (MCPD) is stepping up traffic enforcement around schools as students begin their school year in MCPS. Police chief Marc Yamada commented, “Last school year, more than 48,000 drivers were captured by school bus cameras illegally passing a stopped school bus… We will have our officers and automated enforcement systems out in force to encourage drivers to obey the speed limit and watch out for our most vulnerable road users.”
There is nothing unusual about this as MCPD periodically increases its traffic enforcement efforts at various times of the year. But here is something to notice in progressive MoCo: as police cruisers swarm the streets, where are the activists and their allied politicians who decry allegedly racist traffic stops?
There was a time when ending police officer traffic enforcement was one of the hottest political issues in MoCo. In the wake of the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police and an Office of Legislative Oversight report finding disparate impact of traffic enforcement on people of color, county politicians spurred by progressive activists gave strong consideration to replacing officer traffic enforcement with automation. The subject received attention in Annapolis too. County Executive Marc Elrich’s Reimagining Public Safety Task Force recommended shifting to automation and the county’s FY22 police budget eliminated 29.5 full-time equivalent positions with some of the cuts in traffic enforcement. It’s probably not a coincidence that MCPD traffic citations (excluding cameras) dropped sharply during this period, although it’s unclear how the pandemic and increased camera use played into this.
During the 2022 primaries, county politicians generally toed the line of the left on this issue. In responses to a questionnaire by the Washington Area Bicycle Association, most winning county executive and county council candidates favored removing police officers from all or some traffic enforcement.
But the county never fully embraced the agenda of defunding police traffic stops. The reason was not leadership by the politicians, but rather concern by the voters. An early sign of voter discontent with this approach occurred when the county’s Policing Advisory Commission announced its intent to hold a public meeting to gather support for reducing officer traffic enforcement. Instead, the public called for MORE enforcement. Rising voter agitation around crime, street racing and carjacking eroded the appeal of calls by the left to abolish officer enforcement.
MCPD also played a role in changing perceptions around the issue. The department issued a steady stream of press releases detailing how officer enforcement helped crack down on weapons violations, car theft and carjacking. Department leaders vigorously opposed efforts to stop officer traffic enforcement at both the state and county levels. County Executive Marc Elrich, who had previously slashed police positions and removed officers from schools, could have muzzled them but chose not to. Even Elrich could see the politics around this issue changing.
Council Member Will Jawando, who once publicly supported police defunding, has mounted the most aggressive effort to end officer traffic enforcement over the last two years. In February 2023, he introduced a bill titled the STEP Act (Safety and Traffic Equity in Policing) that would have eliminated many reasons for police to conduct traffic stops. The bill was cosponsored by Council Member Kristin Mink, who had called for defunding police before she was elected. After Attorney General Anthony Brown issued an opinion holding that several sections of Jawando’s bill were preempted by state law, Jawando introduced a stripped down version limiting police consent searches of vehicles, which he calls the Freedom to Leave Act.
Meanwhile, the county marches on with officer traffic enforcement. It remains a cornerstone of the county’s plan to end pedestrian deaths. MCPD proudly trumpets officer traffic stops in reducing DUIs, cracking down on St. Patrick’s Day drunk driving, increasing enforcement on US-29 (the heart of Mink’s council district) and going after impaired commercial drivers. Last July, MCPD introduced “slick-top” cruisers with “ghost graphics” that “will better allow officers to better observe drivers in traffic who may be speeding, texting while driving, not wearing seatbelts, driving impaired or driving aggressively.” What do progressive activists and politicians think of this?
MCPD’s slick-top cruiser with ghost graphics. Photo credit: MCPD.
So is the effort to end police traffic stops really dead? That depends on what happens to Jawando’s Freedom to Leave Act, which was introduced in February but has not yet received a council committee work session. It’s interesting that even one-time police defunder Mink is not listed as a cosponsor. A petition supporting the bill has, at this writing, garnered fewer than a hundred signatures in a county where petitions with thousands of signers are commonplace. My hunch is that this bill would have passed easily two years ago, but that may not be the case now.
In any event, the above story is not one of public safety and criminal justice, but rather one of politics. Compare the statements of our elected officials during the last election to the actual behavior of county government now. These politicians are thin reeds, swaying here and there in the blustery exchanges of quarreling emails. I suspect the voters are more consistent, wanting police enforcement but not racist police. And so once again, it is the voters who lead while their “leaders” follow.