Long Beach police are handing out a lot fewer speeding tickets than they used to — and it’s not because people have suddenly slowed down.
According to police data analyzed by the Long Beach Post, officers last year wrote 1,659 speeding tickets, less than half of the 3,431 speed citations they issued five years earlier in 2019.
A Long Beach Police Department spokesperson declined a request for an interview about why this is happening, but acknowledged in an email that there are fewer officers assigned to traffic enforcement these days.
Long Beach police have struggled to hire officers recently. About a quarter of jobs remain unfilled, according to recent numbers from the city…