The Denver Police Department is limiting its officers from making certain low-level traffic stops to free them up to focus on more serious crimes.
Why it matters: The policy shift is intended to improve efficiency for an agency short 167 officers and seeing longer response times. It’s also an attempt to reduce incidents of racial profiling by police, which critics say too often lead to violence.
- Multiple analyses in recent years have shown that DPD tends to stop, ticket and arrest Black and Hispanic people at a disproportionately higher rate than white residents.
What they’re saying: “This is a move towards earning and regaining that public trust” and “making better use of our time,” police Chief Ron Thomas told CBS4 .
- “A lot of our traffic stops that we would make don’t result in an arrest or citation … so, clearly, we’re not getting what is expected out of them,” he said.
How it works: DPD will no longer pull people over for low-level offenses, which the agency defines as “minor traffic infractions that do not pose an immediate threat to public safety,” according to agency documents provided to Axios Denver.