Bill 12-23, Traffic Limitations, introduced by Councilmember Will Jawando, is another example of the dangerous overreach of Council power, using legislation to limit the police and hindering their ability to keep the community safe. Once again, Mr. Jawando is trying to set law enforcement policy, which is the job of County administration, not the County Council. His constant battle against law enforcement has not helped make Montgomery County any safer and has resulted in low morale and high turnover in all public safety jobs in the County.
It is unfortunate that a county facing rising property and persons crimes has a councilmember attempting to scale back the ability of police officers to protect the community. This type of legislation aimed at defunding police departments is yet another catalyst emboldening those who seek to do harm.
To justify his legislation, Mr. Jawando used a flawed report from the Office of Legislative Oversight (OLO). Statistics are important for a lot of reasons, but, unfortunately, they can be manipulated and were in the OLO report. The report does not include statistics from redlight and speed cameras or account for non-county resident statistics when making their case about disproportionality.
According to the OLO report, “black drivers accounted for 30 percent of the stops despite being 18 percent of the population.” This is misleading. It omits the important point that 25 percent of traffic stops conducted during the period captured by the report were of non-county residents. How many were non-resident black or brown drivers?
Additionally, the report did not include automated traffic enforcement in Montgomery County. Other nationwide research, including in Chicago and Washington, DC, found that automated traffic enforcement disproportionally cited minorities.
Finally, this bill makes it illegal for law enforcement to write tickets for jaywalking, effectively legalizing it. Some of the most dangerous roads for pedestrians in the U.S., according to a 2021 study, run through low-income neighborhoods, which are themselves disproportionately likely to be communities of color. Choosing to ignore jaywalking, and putting even more folks at risk for traffic fatalities does not support Vision Zero’s goals at all.
Bill 12-23 will certainly be destructive to public safety in Montgomery County. Mr. Jawando claimed when introducing his bill that law enforcement would not be prohibited from enforcing driving under the influence laws and other goals of Vision Zero. This exposes his ignorance to what traffic stops often reveal – substantial numbers of impaired drivers are discovered through equipment violations, the same violations that Mr. Jawando is trying to restrict.
Mr. Jawando stated that this bill “will allow our officers to focus on serious traffic stops.” What is a low-level versus a serious traffic stop?
Let’s have a real conversation about what needs to be done to fight back against implicit bias and racism in policing in OUR COUNTY. Community policing needs to focus on the community in which we live and work. We need our politicians to stop trying to seize opportunities to make names for themselves and work to solve our real problems.
We hope Mr. Jawando and any current council members who plan on supporting this bill will be able to sleep at night knowing this bill could lead to more traffic-related deaths. It keeps us up at night.