Letters to the Editor: Traffic stops are dangerous. Instead, treat most offenses like parking tickets

To the editor: Let’s prohibit unneeded traffic stops. Why does an officer have to stop and detain a person, a serious interference with liberty, just to issue a low-level ticket? (“Why traffic stops can be deadly for people of color,” Opinion, April 15)

There are other ways to enforce traffic laws. Couldn’t vehicle conditions — such as broken taillights, the unspeakable crime of overly tinted windows and Daunte Wright’s capital offense of air-freshener-hanging — be treated like parking tickets? The officer who sees the violation could send the license plate information to a traffic enforcement bureau, which would send the ticket to the vehicle owner.

For moving violations that aren’t excessively dangerous, the officer could press a button to take a picture of the driver with a camera mounted in the patrol car’s rear window. The picture and vehicle information could be sent to the traffic bureau, possibly identifying the driver.

Traffic stops are a serious precipitator of killings, shootings and assaults of drivers and passengers, and of officers too. There must be many other creative ways to end these stops.

Ira Spiro, Los Angeles

The writer is an attorney.

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To the editor: According to a 2015 report in the Washington Post, there were 107 fatalities as a result of police traffic stops that year.

In their L.A. Times op-ed article, Frank R. Baumgartner, Derek Epp and Kelsey Shoub advise that there are “tens of millions” of traffic stops involving citizens and police every year. In other words, the chances of a citizen, any citizen, being killed during the course of a traffic stop by police are roughly on a par with those of being struck by lightning.

What we have here is one more example of the social justice crowd beating the wrong drum. If groups want to address problems in the Black community, traffic stop fatalities should be low on the list.

Louis H. Nevell, Los Angeles