Stop the Stops: Ending Racially Biased and Ineffective LAPD Traffic Stops

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All Angelenos deserve safe communities where they can commute to work, school, and other places without fear of being stopped, searched, and harassed by the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD). For many Black and Latine residents, this vision is far from a reality. 

This data brief shows that the LAPD continues to profile Black and Latine people through pretextual traffic stops after the department adopted a weak policy to limit these stops in March 2022. A pretextual stop typically occurs when an officer uses a minor traffic violation as the reason to stop a person (i.e., pretext) when the officer’s underlying intention is to look for evidence of a more serious offense. These are often based on racially biased and inaccurate assumptions about the propensity of people of color to engage in criminal activity.

Pretextual stops inflict mental and emotional trauma, extract wealth through ticket fees and fines, and all too often result in physical harm through uses of force. These stops also have little to no bearing on traffic safety outcomes. Considering these problems, states and localities throughout the nation are banning pretextual stops.

This new research analyzes the LAPD’s officer-initiated stops from the first quarter (Q1) of 2019 through the fourth quarter (Q4) of 2025, based on data collected and publicly reported pursuant to the Racial & Identity Profiling Act of 2015 (RIPA). A particular focus is placed on stops for minor traffic violations—specifically, stops for vehicle equipment and administrative (or non-moving) violations—because officers often use them as the stated reason for pretextual stops and they are a primary focus of the department’s policy on pretextual stops.

In sum, data show that, despite the policy, stops for minor traffic violations are frequently used for pretextual stops and remain a racially biased and ineffective safety strategy. In addition, an analysis of both the amount of time LAPD spends on stops for minor traffic violations and LAPD’s budget shows that enforcement of minor traffic violations costs over $77 million annually. To address this problem, the City of Los Angeles should ban stops for minor traffic violations.

Key Findings

1. The LAPD’s Continued Use of Stops for Minor Traffic Violations as Pretext is Racially Biased 

• Stops: Since the LAPD adopted its pretextual stop policy, stops for minor traffic violations have accounted for more than half of all officer-initiated stops designated pretextual by officers. In 2025, Black people accounted for 31% of all stops for minor violations while only comprising 8% of the city’s population. Latine people were also overrepresented—making up 58% of minor violation stops while accounting for 47% of the city’s population. White people were significantly underrepresented, accounting for only 8% of minor traffic stops in 2025 while comprising 28% of the city’s population.
• Searches: Since the LAPD adopted its policy, Latine people have been 1.4-2.2 times more likely than white people to be subjected to searches during stops for minor traffic violations. The rate for Black people has been 1.9-2.7 times greater than for white people.   

2. The LAPD’s Use of Minor Traffic Violations as Pretext is Ineffective 

• Highest Discretion Searches: A key measure of efficacy for pretextual stops is how often evidence of a crime is discovered when a search occurs. During stops for minor traffic violations, consent searches are extremely ineffective, with a 91-97% failure rate since 2022. In addition, data show that Black and Latine people are often less likely than white people to be found in possession of contraband during these searches.   
• Low Discretion Searches: Searches of people on probation or parole during stops for minor traffic violations are similarly ineffective, with a failure rate of 91-96%. 

3. The LAPD wastes time and millions of public dollars on stops for minor traffic violations 

• LAPD Hours: In 2025, LAPD officers spent a total of 22,115 hours on officer-initiated stops for minor traffic violations. Patrol officers assigned under the LAPD’s Office of Operations accounted for the most hours spent on minor traffic violations. Collectively, these officers spent approximately 21,733 hours on stops for minor traffic violations, representing about 14.5% of their total time spent on stops. 
• Cost of stops: Stops for minor traffic violations made by patrol officers under LAPD’s Office of Operations cost approximately $77.4 million annually. This amount exceeds city investments in many departments that improve community safety and wellbeing, such as Youth Development ($2.5 million); Civil, Human Rights & Equity ($5.4 million); Economic and Workforce Development ($18.8 million); and Community Investment in Families ($44.5 million). 

Context

Since 2019, a broad cross-sector coalition, PUSH LA, has organized and advocated for Los Angeles to ban LAPD’s use of pretextual stops, and for greater investments in equity- and care-based traffic safety solutions. In June 2020, following the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer and resulting nationwide protests for police reform, Councilmembers Marqueece Harris-Dawson, Mike Bonin, Curren Price and Herb Wesson introduced a motion requiring the city to explore ending pretextual stops and shifting toward non-law enforcement alternatives to traffic safety.   

From 2019 through early 2022, there was a considerable decrease across all officer-initiated stops by the LAPD that was likely due to the COVID-19 pandemic’s lockdown restrictions and the movement for police reform in the wake of George Floyd. 

Based on PUSH LA’s efforts, the Los Angeles Department of Transportation (LADOT) created a task force to evaluate traffic safety alternatives from 2022 to 2023. This culminated in recommendations submitted to the city council in November 2023.1 The recommendations included, among other things:

1. banning all stops for equipment and non-moving/administrative violations,
2. implementing equity-based alternatives to traffic ticket fees and fines,
3. improving street infrastructure to prevent traffic safety risks, and
4. expanding unarmed, care-based response.

On March 1, 2022, the LAPD adopted a policy titled Limitation on Use of Pretextual Stops. It provides that “officers should make stops for minor equipment violations or other infractions only when the officer believes that such a violation or infraction significantly interferes with public safety.” In addition, the policy allows pretextual stops to occur if an officer is “acting upon articulable information in addition to the traffic violation [used as the basis for the stop], which may or may not amount to reasonable suspicion regarding a serious crime . . . .”

In June 2024, the council directed several agencies—including the Chief Legislative Analyst’s office, the LADOT, and the LAPD—to assess the feasibility of implementing the task force recommendations and report back in 90 days. The feasibility study was excessively delayed and important aspects of the study were not complete until early 2026.

Analysis

The analysis below has three main parts. First, data is evaluated to show that, despite LAPD’s adoption of a policy to limit pretextual stops in March 2022, the department continues to use minor traffic violations for pretextual stops and doing so is racially biased. Second, data show that, in addition to being racially biased, the LAPD's use of pretextual stops is an ineffective safety strategy. Third, LA City budget information shows that this practice wastes millions of public dollars annually.  

The LAPD's continued use of minor traffic violations for pretextual stops is racially biased 

When performing a stop, officers must report the primary reason for the stop based on state regulations. Stop reasons fit within three general categories: (1) stops for minor traffic violations (i.e., equipment and administrative issues like a broken tail light and outdated registration); (2) stops for moving traffic violations (e.g., speeding); and (3) stops based on other reasons (e.g., reasonable suspicion of a crime or a warrant to arrest a person). This analysis focuses on officer-initiated stops for minor traffic violations because officers commonly use these violations for pretextual stops, and LAPD’s 2022 policy instructed officers to limit their use.

In addition, the policy requires officers to designate whether stops are pretextual in their data collection. Data show that from 2022 through 2025, 56% of stops that officers categorized as pretextual were for minor traffic violations. Comparatively, for stops not categorized as pretextual, only 14% were for minor traffic violations. Thus, officers were four times more likely to use minor traffic violations as a reason to conduct pretextual stops compared to those not categorized as pretextual. 

However, because of problems associated with pretextual stops—including racial bias—the reliability of officer reporting on pretextual stops is questionable. These stops likely occur more frequently without being designated or categorized as pretextual. In light of these challenges, the field of research related to pretextual stops—and jurisdictional policies to limit their usage—often focuses on stops for minor traffic violations because they are frequently used to conduct pretextual stops and can be more reliably measured. That approach is applied in the analysis below.  

The LAPD continues to use minor traffic violations as a pretext for stops   

Out of all officer-initiated stops since 2019, the share of people stopped for minor traffic violations has remained relatively constant except for a momentary decrease immediately after the pretextual stop policy was adopted. Specifically, immediately after the policy was adopted stops for minor violations decreased from 20% in Q1 of 2022 to 13% in Q2 of 2022. Figures rebounded to 20% shortly thereafter.2 According to the LAPD, the temporary decrease was due to officers learning the new policy and other implementation factors.  Since Q4 of 2022, the share of people stopped for minor traffic violations has hovered around 20%. In 2025, this equated to 53,986 people stopped. 

Minor traffic stops are extremely racially biased 

Black and Latine people are overrepresented in stops for minor traffic violations. Specifically, from 2019 to 2025, Black people typically accounted for 27-32% of stops for minor traffic violations—a rate more than 3-4 times greater than their share of the city’s population, 8%. Latine people accounted for 49-59% of stops for minor traffic violations while comprising 47% of the population. In comparison, white people were significantly underrepresented, accounting for 8-13% of minor traffic stops while making up 28% of the population. The LAPD’s pretextual stop policy did not change racial disparities in these stops. Black and Latine people remain disproportionately affected, and the department has stopped a higher rate of Latine people for minor traffic violations since 2019. 

From 2019 to 2025, parts of LA with higher concentrations of Black and Latine residents—including South LA, the San Fernando Valley, and Mid-City/West Adams—had higher rates (often 20% or more) of officer-initiated stops for minor traffic violations compared to other areas. Council District 9 consistently had the highest rate of stops for minor traffic violations. Conversely, District 11 had lower rates than most other districts since 2019.

In addition, Black and Latine Angelenos are far more likely to be searched than white people during stops for minor traffic violations. Since 2022, Black people have been 1.9-2.7 times more likely to be searched than white people during minor traffic stops. Latine people have been 1.4-2.2 times more likely to be searched than white people. While disparities narrowed in 2024, they never closed and have risen since.

The graph below shows how often Black and Latine people were searched during stops for minor traffic violations compared to the search rate of white people. In other words, compared to the search rate of white people in a particular year or quarter, how much more likely were Black or Latine people to be searched?

The LAPD’s reliance on minor traffic violations for pretextual stops is ineffective 

A key measure of the effectiveness of pretextual stops is how often evidence of a crime is discovered when a search occurs, also known as the “discovery rate.” For example, a discovery rate of 20% means officers find evidence in two out of every 10 searches, and that eight out of 10 searches do not find evidence. Different types of searches yield different discovery rates. In general, searches can be categorized into four types based on the level of discretion an officer has in determining whether to conduct a search3:  

• Highest discretion: Searches conducted solely based on consent
• High discretion: Searches based on some combination of consent, officer safety, and/or suspected presence of weapons, but not falling into any other discretion category
• Low discretion: Searches done only based on the parole or probation status of the person stopped 
• Lowest discretion: Searches done based on an arrest, vehicle inventory, and/or search warrant alone or in combination with other search bases

Searches based on the highest level of officer discretion (i.e., consent searches) are notoriously problematic because people subjected to them often do not truly consent to being searched. More specifically, it is not uncommon for officers to make misrepresentations about obtaining consent. For example, a 2020 review of consent searches by the Office of Inspector General (OIG) to the LAPD Commission concluded as follows: 

“[T]he OIG noted instances where consent from the subject of the search could not be heard, or where the consent was provided after at least one search had already been conducted by the officers. Additionally, a small number of these cases involved a search reported as being consensual where officers’ language may have been interpreted to mean that the search was not, in fact, voluntary.” 

Furthermore, research shows that “in the context of a traffic stop, the power differential between an officer and the person being stopped is enormous ...,” such that “the line between ‘request’ and ‘command’ is often unclear, and most people feel compelled to comply. Factors like language barriers and disability may heighten the coercive nature of these encounters.”   

Data show that during stops for minor traffic violations, searches conducted based on the highest level of officer discretion are extremely ineffective. Specifically, since 2022, the discovery rate for these searches has ranged between 3-9%. Stated differently, consent searches during stops for minor traffic violations had a 91-97% failure rate (i.e., no evidence of a crime was found). Beyond the context of law enforcement, a failure rate of more than nine out of 10 in nearly any government practice that purportedly aims to improve communities (e.g., public health, housing, or education) would lead to ending that practice or, at minimum, a substantial change.    

Searches based on low officer discretion—i.e., searches of people on probation or parole—were the second least effective category. Since 2022, they have yielded a discovery rate of just 4-9% (i.e., a 91-96% failure rate). In addition to being ineffective, searches of people on probation or parole are extremely problematic. They often occur based on severe power imbalances, such as a person being forced to waive their constitutional right to be free from unreasonable searches as a condition of release from incarceration or as part of a plea bargain, which essentially creates a form of second-class citizenship.  

The third least successful category was searches based on high officer discretion, which had a discovery rate of 8-22% (in other words, a 78-92% failure rate). Searches based on the lowest level of officer discretion had higher discovery rates of 41-55% since 2022. This was likely because they occurred in situations when there was a higher likelihood of a significant violation, beyond mere pretext.  As noted above, these searches occurred because an arrest was being made, a car was being impounded, and/or there was a search warrant.   

Lastly, the least effective search category—highest discretion or consent searches—was not only extremely ineffective but also racially biased. Specifically, Black and Latine people are often no more, and usually less, likely than white people to be found in possession of contraband during these searches, yet officers are far more likely to subject Black and Latine people to searches during stops for minor traffic violations.4 Since the pretextual stop policy, racial disparities in the occurrence of consent searches during minor traffic violations have persisted, and these searches remain ineffective.

Rather than conducting numerous searches that yield no evidence and are racially biased, gun buyback programs are an effective, less harmful alternative. For example, in 2022, the LAPD recovered 459 firearms in a single day through a buyback program that allowed members of public to anonymously exchange guns in exchange for $100-$200 gift cards. In 2021, the department collected 444 guns through the program. This common-sense solution avoids the trauma, harassment, and dehumanization that often arises from racially biased stops and is a far more efficient way of getting guns out of communities.

The LAPD wastes time and millions of public dollars on stops for minor traffic violations 

Public dollars should be invested in programs that enhance community safety. This goal is undermined by relying on racially biased and ineffective stops for minor traffic violations. The analysis below shows that the LAPD’s minor traffic stops impose significant costs in terms of both officer time spent conducting the stops and taxpayer dollars allocated to fund them.

LAPD officers spend significant time on minor traffic stops

Pursuant to RIPA, the department collects and reports the duration of each stop. This does not include the time spent on patrol that makes stops possible nor doing post-stop administrative tasks.  

Data show that in 2025 LAPD officers spent a total of 22,115 hours on officer-initiated minor traffic stops. Officers within LAPD’s Office of Operations accounted for the most hours spent on these stops. In 2025, officers assigned to divisions within this office spent a total of 21,733 hours on officer-initiated minor traffic stops. This accounted for 14.5% of their total stop time, or about one in seven of their stop hours. Officers in the Newton, Foothill, and Southwest areas each spent the most hours on officer-initiated minor traffic stops.

Minor traffic violation enforcement costs millions of public dollars annually 

Within LAPD’s organizational structure, the Office of Operations (OO) manages the department’s general policing functions and houses the majority of sworn personnel. It oversees four bureaus that are divided into 21 area stations. It oversees most patrol activities across the city.  

In 2025, OO deployed  2,770 officers to patrol operations. The median annual cost per officer –including salary, retirement, and health contributions – was approximately $192,338. This figure excludes the salaries of senior officers such as captains and sergeants and does not include the indirect expenditures incurred to facilitate police activities. Multiplying the median salary and benefits cost to the total number of deployed patrol officers provides an estimate of the total patrol personnel costs. Applying the share of time officers spend on stops for officer-initiated minor traffic violations (14.5%) yields an estimated cost of $77.4 million.

As context, the estimated cost of stops for minor traffic violations ($77.4 million) far exceeds the city’s budget for many departments that are critical to community safety and wellbeing, including Youth Development ($2.5 million); Civil, Human Rights & Equity ($5.4 million); Economic and Workforce Development ($18.8 million); and Community Investment in Families ($44.5 million). As an alternative to stops for minor traffic violations, research shows that increasing investments in self-enforcing infrastructure—which refers to road features that slow traffic and alleviate traffic safety risks—can equitably improve traffic safety. This includes features like speed humps, chicanes, curb extensions, and raised pedestrian crossings.

Recommendation

In conclusion, despite the LAPD’s adoption of a pretextual stop policy in 2022, the department continues to rely on minor traffic violations as pretext to disproportionately stop and search Black and Latine Angelenos. 

This practice is racially biased and inefficient because it occurs based on vehicle equipment and administrative issues that pose little to no risk to traffic safety and rarely result in the discovery of criminal evidence—wasting valuable city and taxpayer resources that could be used on more effective community safety investments. 

The City of Los Angeles should prohibit stops for vehicle equipment and administrative (i.e., non-moving) violations unless they pose an imminent, significant traffic safety risk. To the extent these stops occur, officers should not be allowed to conduct consent searches, nor searches based solely on a person’s probation or parole status. 

For more comprehensive recommendations, please see the PUSH LA policy brief.  

Footnotes

1 See Traffic Enforcement Alternatives Project Report, council file 20-0875, Nov. 30, 2023, p. 4.

2 Looking broadly at all officer-initiated stops also shows that stops have generally decreased since 2019 across all stop categories.

3 Variations of these four categories were used in prior reports by the Racial & Identity Profiling Act Advisory Board, and LAPD Police Commission Office of Inspector General. We do not include searches that were conducted based on a combination of highest, high, and low discretion reasons. This is similar to methods in prior reports.

4 See also OIG report.

Methodology

This analysis focuses on people stopped for minor traffic violations, given that officers often use these violations as the initial reason to conduct a pretextual stop. Stops for minor traffic violations are defined as officer-initiated stops originally made for an equipment or non-moving traffic violation. We use stops for minor traffic violations, and searches done during these stops, as a proxy for analyzing the pretextual stop policy’s effect. LAPD policy advises that officers should make stops for minor equipment violations or other infractions only when the officer believes that the violation “significantly interferes with public safety." As such, one would expect a decline in minor equipment or non-moving violation stops and unnecessary searches during these stops following the policy. This approach differs from recently released reports from the chief legislative analyst and chief of police that also attempt to estimate the policy’s impact. 

In April 2022, the LAPD began asking officers to identify whether a stop was pretextual. In report-backs to the Los Angeles City Council and the Board of Police Commissioners, the chief legislative analyst and the chief of police use this “pretext” stop field to assess the policy’s effect. The LAPD’s data documentation defines this field as “officers use reasonable suspicion or probable cause of a minor traffic or code violation to investigate another, more serious crime that is unrelated to that violation." The field is based on officer self-report of whether they made a stop for pretextual reasons. Given uncertainty in the accuracy of the data reported by officers and the lack of historical data before 2022, this analysis does not use the pretext stop field. Instead, we rely on stop reason fields officers must collect pursuant to RIPA. Analyses estimating the policy’s effect should examine other stop characteristics and trends beyond those captured in the LAPD’s added pretext field to have a broader picture of the policy’s impact.

Time Spent and Budget Analysis 

We rely on stop duration times officers record pursuant to RIPA to estimate the number and share of hours officers spend on minor traffic violations by officer division. RIPA also requires law enforcement agencies to report the officer’s division for each stop. We matched these divisions to the LAPD’s organizational chart to identify divisions within LAPD’s Office of Operations. To estimate the percentage time officers spent on officer-initiated minor traffic violations, we sum the hours officers within these divisions spent on officer-initiated minor traffic violations and divide by the total hours they spent on all stops, whether officer-initiated or calls for service. We control for outliers in RIPA data where an officer likely recorded the stop duration in error, e.g., the stop took more than 2 days or only a minute. We do this through a multiple regression analysis that controls for various stop characteristics to identify and adjust for outliers in stop time.  

To estimate the cost of enforcing minor traffic violations, we first identified the total number of officers deployed to patrol operations within LAPD’s Office of Operations using 2025 reporting data that indicates that at any given time, 2,770 police officers are on active patrol. This provided a clearer picture of how many officers are engaged in patrol work and therefore most likely to conduct officer-initiated stops for minor traffic violations as part of their routine duties.  

We then used 2024 salary data from the State Controller's Government Compensation in California database to estimate personnel costs. Based on the department’s rank structure and patrol responsibilities, we focused on positions classified as Police Officer I, II, and III, which make up the largest share of sworn personnel and are most likely to be assigned to patrol functions. These officers perform a range of field duties, including patrol in assigned geographic divisions, traffic coordination, responding to suspicious activity and crimes in progress, and preparing field reports, among other responsibilities. Using salary, retirement, and health contribution data for these positions, we estimated a median annual compensation costs of approximately $192,338 per patrol officer.

• Police Officer: These personnel comprise the largest number of sworn officers in the department. The Police Officer rank is divided into three paygrade advancement ranks: Police Officer I, II, and III. A Police Officer may be assigned to a foot beat, a black and white patrol car, bicycle patrol, Mounted Unit, a two-wheel motorcycle or a specialized unit such as S.W.A.T. or K-9 Unit –assigned to a geographic patrol division within the City and performs basic duties that include: coordinating vehicular traffic, monitoring any suspicious activity of ongoing crimes, preparing daily field activity reports, and numerous other activities in support of the community policing philosophy.

Using these inputs, we estimated the cost of enforcing minor traffic violations by multiplying the number of patrol officers by the median annual compensation costs, and then applying the share of officer time spent on officer-initiated stops for minor traffic violations. 

• Calculation: (Number of officers x median compensation patrol officer) x percent of time spent on officer-initiated stops for minor traffic violations  
• (2,770 x $192,338) x 14.5% = $77, 405,906.6 ($77.4 million)  

This estimate likely understates the true costs of minor traffic violation enforcement, as it excludes indirect costs. It reflects only direct personnel expenses –salaries, retirement, and health benefits –and does not account for additional overhead or other positions that may also conduct traffic stops as part of their duties.

Acknowledgments

This report was produced in partnership with the PUSH LA coalition. Staff from Catalyst California also contributed as follows: 

Research and Data Analysis 

Elycia Mulholland Graves, Director, Research & Data Analysis

Jennifer Zhang, Manager of Research & Data Analysis

Leila Forouzan, Senior Manager of Research & Data Analysis

Alicia Vo, Research & Data Analyst

Hillary Khan, Data Architect Manager

Writing and Editing 

Elycia Mulholland Graves, Director, Research & Data Analysis

Chauncee Smith, Associate Director, Reimagine Justice & Safety 

Jennifer Zhang, Manager of Research & Data Analysis

Myanna Khalfani-King, Manager, Equity in Community Investments

Budget Analysis

Jacky Guerrero, Senior Director, Equity in Community Investments

Myanna Khalfani-King, Manager, Equity in Community Investments

Communications 

Tessie Borden, Senior Communications Manager