{"id":481164,"date":"2026-10-01T03:22:09","date_gmt":"2026-10-01T03:22:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/481164\/"},"modified":"2026-10-01T03:22:09","modified_gmt":"2026-10-01T03:22:09","slug":"san-francisco-police-stopping-drivers-far-less-for-minor-offenses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/481164\/","title":{"rendered":"San Francisco police stopping drivers far less for minor offenses"},"content":{"rendered":"

San Francisco police officers have mostly stopped pulling drivers over for minor violations like expired tags, dangling air fresheners and broken taillights, and are using force against fewer drivers, according to a new report<\/a> released Wednesday.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The fall in traffic stops, which comes after a 2024 policy change, came without any noticeable impact on crime or the number of weapons seized, the report also found. But Black drivers are still stopped for minor reasons far more often than white drivers. Though they make up 5 percent of San Francisco\u2019s driving-age population, Black drivers were 15 percent of those stopped by police.<\/p>\n

The report looked at traffic stop data before and after a 2024 policy<\/a> that required officers to stop making \u201cpretextual traffic stops,\u201d in which police question drivers for minor violations like defective lights or recently expired registration. Instead, officers were required to only pull people over if they saw other infractions or crimes, like running a red light or speeding.<\/p>\n

Before the change, 13 percent of San Francisco Police Department traffic stops were for \u201cpretextual\u201d reasons subsequently restricted by the department. By 2025, that share fell to 5.2 percent, about three stops a day.<\/p>\n

The report, put together by the Center for Policing Equity for traffic stop data from 2018 to 2025, also showed police officers used force against drivers in traffic stops less. But the results are limited because the number of incidents is small: Police officers used force in traffic stops fewer than 100 times per year since 2020.<\/p>\n

Still, the report found banning pretext stops coincided with a 44 percent reduction in officers using force against Black drivers. That drop was 51 percent for Latino drivers.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Notably, after police union\u00a0resistance<\/a>\u00a0to ending pretextual stops over claims that the policy would jeopardize their ability to keep\u00a0\u201cdangerous criminals\u201d<\/a>\u00a0off the streets, that has not happened: Crime was\u00a0down<\/a>\u00a0almost 44 percent from 2023 to 2025.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis idea that pretext stops help crime go down \u2013 the data just doesn\u2019t support that,\u201d added Matthew Graham, senior data analyst with Center for Policing Equity and an author of the report.<\/p>\n

Traffic stops turned up few guns either way: Officers recovered 17 firearms in 2024 and 16 in 2025, \u201cabout the same as the numbers in 2022 and 2023\u201d and down from 78 in 2019. \u201cBecause traffic stops yield so few firearm and weapon seizures, reducing pretextual stops is unlikely to have a meaningful impact on weapon-based crime,\u201d the report read.<\/p>\n

The report authors do suggest the city do further study, however: They found that a catch-all category, \u201cLocal Ordinance Violation,\u201d rose from 336 incidents in 2023 to 1,982 in 2025. They suggest officers may be using the category in place of the now-restricted reasons, and recommend a city audit.<\/p>\n

Brian Cox, the police accountability lead at the public defender\u2019s office who pushed for the changes, said the results show the end of pretext traffic stops did not worsen public safety.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe can reduce inefficient police contact with the public while maintaining the level of service that people in San Francisco have come to expect,\u201d Cox said.<\/p>\n

The changes to traffic stops came after years of pressure. A 2021 investigation<\/a> by the New York Times found that police nationwide had killed over 400 people in their cars, who did not have weapons or were speeding, in the prior five years. In San Francisco, numerous<\/a> reports<\/a> found that stops disproportionately affected non-white drivers.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The San Francisco police union, however, fought<\/a> the changes. It stalled a proposed policy for over a year and claimed it \u201cunlawfully imposes restrictions\u201d on what police officers can do. When the policy came into effect in July 2024, the union unsuccessfully<\/a> sued.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

The San Francisco Police Officers Association did not immediately respond to a request for comment.\u00a0<\/p>\n

While the SFPD declined to comment on the report, its official policy<\/a> language makes the department\u2019s stance clear. The introduction reads: \u201cPretext stops are disproportionately carried out against people of color and return negligible public safety benefits.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"San Francisco police officers have mostly stopped pulling drivers over for minor violations like expired tags, dangling air…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":481165,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[723,188665,101,103,102,104,106,105,4736],"class_list":["post-481164","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco","tag-crime","tag-pretext-stops","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco-headlines","tag-san-francisco-news","tag-sf","tag-sf-headlines","tag-sf-news","tag-sfpd"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/481164","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=481164"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/481164\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/481165"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=481164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=481164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=481164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}