Rantz: Seattle Inspector General pushes anti-police agenda banning traffic stops May 23, 2021 at 9:24 pm
Seattle Inspector General Lisa Judge is forwarding a dangerous idea. (Photo: Jason Rantz/KTTH and City of Seattle)
Seattle’s Inspector General is forwarding dangerous propaganda with absurd advice. It helps further turn activists in the community against cops. But worse, she’s making it more dangerous for officers to do their jobs.
Lisa Judge is calling on interim Seattle Police Chief Adrian Diaz to end low-level traffic stops. She frames it around community and officer safety. Judge argues that pulling motorists over for non-serious crimes “has received widespread attention recently because of tragic situations involving unnecessary deaths.” She cites deaths of officers and members of the public.
Seattle inspector general calls for end to low-level traffic stops to avoid deadly outcomes
Seattle police in South Park. (KIRO 7 TV, Brian Doerflinger )
Nationwide there are some 20 million traffic stops every year. Researchers say they are the most common face-to-face encounter with police, according to Seattle Inspector General Lisa Judge, who is calling on interim Seattle Police Chief Adrian Diaz to end low level traffic stops that she says are not worth the risk of tragic outcomes seen both to officers and community members.
In a letter this week to Chief Diaz, Judge points to data from Mapping Police Violence, which tracks police-involved deaths, indicating that a 11% of all people killed by police in 2019 were killed during traffic stops, and a disproportionate number of those – 32% – were Black. In that same year, six of 48 officer deaths happened during traffic stops.