Traffic Stops by Denver Police Plunge Nearly 50 Percent

DENVER -- James Roy II still remembers driving in Cherry Creek some 15 years ago when he was pulled over for an illegal turn, for turning right into the second lane instead of the first.

A Black man in his 20s, he and his two Black friends went into police safety mode: just get through it. But their white friend in the back seat took a different approach, calling the officer out for racial profiling, going on and on and on.

“We were frustrated with our friend, like, ‘Man, shut up. Stop,’ ” Roy said. “But he was like, ‘You just pulled this car over because it has Black people in it.’ He just kept going. And we were feeling so uncomfortable. But it actually worked. They were like, ‘OK, just go on.’ ”

Roy, now executive director of Denver Metro Community Impact, a nonprofit focused on advancing equity, left that traffic stop without a citation — but the memory is still fresh years later.

So is the time he was pulled over for an expired plate. And the time he was stopped because his taillight was out.

It’s that kind of traffic stop that Denver police Chief Ron Thomas aimed to curb in May when he changed his department’s traffic enforcement policy to prohibit officers from pulling drivers over solely for minor traffic infractions that don’t immediately threaten public safety.

To stop a driver for infractions such as recently expired license plates, missing taillights or cracked windshields, officers in the Denver Police Department must now also have a second reason to carry out the stop, like suspecting the driver is connected to a more serious crime, or as a response to a specific, ongoing crime trend in a particular neighborhood.

Traffic stops in Denver plunged nearly 50% after the policy change this year, dropping from more than 18,300 stops in the four months before the May change to 9,600 stops in the four months after the shift, according to data provided by the police department.

Data from October, the most recent month available, shows an even bigger monthly decline: Officers pulled over 5,787 drivers in January, compared to just 2,354 in October — a 59% decrease.

When launched, Thomas heralded the new approach to traffic enforcement as a way to better direct police resources and to correct longstanding racial disparities in which drivers of color were pulled over disproportionately often. Critics said the approach would prevent officers from proactively addressing crime, lead to less safe roads and decrease the city’s revenue from traffic tickets.

Denver’s new traffic enforcement policy is designed to cut down on pretextual traffic stops — that is, traffic stops for minor infractions that police officers then use to look for evidence of a more serious crime, even though they have no reason to suspect a more serious crime has been committed.

The move drew sharp criticism from the head of the union representing Denver police officers when it was rolled out in May.

“While the policy does not prohibit traffic stops, it limits the ability to stop vehicles for lawful violations. This potentially leaves offenders in the community,” Denver Police Protective Association president Tyson Worrell told Denver7.

He did not return requests for comment on this story.

Six months after the change, Denver police data shows that the racial disparity in stops of Black and Latino drivers improved slightly. The city saw an uptick in car crashes but not a major change, and crash fatalities in the city are on track to be lower this year than last.

Revenue collected from tickets issued for expired license plates — one of the most talked-about aspects of the new policy — is down compared to last year, though city officials expect revenues to increase as recently-issued tickets are paid in the coming months.

And while police made thousands fewer traffic stops since May, the focus of those stops shifted away from physical problems with vehicles and toward speeding, unsafe drivers and parking violations, the data shows.

The policy is having the expected effects, Thomas said in a recent interview, and he believes officers are beginning to focus on more meaningful police work.

“Certainly, increasing driver safety matters,” he said. “Doing things that have true impacts on crime matter. Our trust patrols matter, our Hot Streets patrols matter, but I’ve never seen any data to suggest that making random traffic stops for minor violations has any impact on community safety or traffic safety.”

Stops plunge, enforcement shifts

Traffic stops of all types in Denver plunged almost universally after the enforcement policy changed in May, and the reasons for traffic stops also shifted, the data shows.

Officers conducted thousands fewer stops and issued thousands fewer citations — police wrote 9,699 citations in the four months before the change and 5,660 in the four months after, the data shows.

But officers were more likely to issue citations during traffic stops after the policy change, the data shows. Between January and April, about 54% of stops resulted in citations, compared to about 61% in the six months after the policy shift.

“That would indicate to me that they are stopping vehicles for the right reasons, whether it be safety violations or to investigate some potential crime,” Thomas said.

The reasons for traffic stops also shifted. A higher percentage of traffic stops were focused on illegal parking, speeding and reckless or careless drivers after the policy change, while a lower percentage of stops were focused on physical problems with vehicles.

Examining why police officers are pulling drivers over is one way to see how the policy change is playing out, said Daniel Bodah, senior program associate at the Vera Institute, a nonprofit organization focused on criminal justice reform.

“Not all traffic stops are the same,” Bodah said.

The goal of a policy like Denver’s is to shift traffic enforcement toward offenses that directly impact safety, like driving under the influence, and away from offenses that don’t, like tinted windows, expired registrations or loose bumpers, he added.

“These don’t necessarily have anything to do with the safe driving behavior of the person driving the car,” he said. “…So if we see a decrease (in stops), we want to know whether that decrease is concentrated in the types of stops targeted by the policy, or not.”

In Denver, stops for speeding decreased by 35% after the change, from more than 8,200 stops in the four months before the policy change to 5,300 in the four months after the change.

But of all the traffic stops police made, a higher percentage of them were for speeding after the policy change, the data shows. About 44% of all traffic stops were for suspected speeders before the policy change. That rose to 56% of stops in the six months after the change, even as police pulled over fewer drivers.

The number of drivers stopped for equipment violations, including broken headlights or obstructed windows, plunged from 1,165 during the four months pre-policy change to 388 in the four months after the change, the data shows. Such stops went from being 6% of all traffic stops to 4%.

The city also saw a significant decrease in stops for what the police department calls “other moving violations.” It’s a catch-all label that includes any violation that doesn’t have its own category, police spokesman Doug Schepman said, including violations such as expired plates, illegal turns and driving without a license.

The number of stops for other moving violations plunged 75% after the new policy began, and went from 29% of all traffic stops to 13% of stops.

The number of traffic stops for right-of-way violations, red light violations, motor vehicle theft, suspected drug offenses and lane use all went down.

A notable exception to the across-the-board decrease was traffic stops for suspected weapon violations: those went up, the data shows, though only by a handful, from 33 stops during the four months before the new approach to 42 stops in the four months after.

Thomas said the new policy should funnel officers toward more serious traffic enforcement.

“Just making a stop to see what you get is not a good use of your time, it’s not a successful tactic,” Thomas said. “Combining that justification for making a stop with other factors — time of day, description of the vehicle, other factors that might connect it to a suspected crime or some trend that is going on in the community — that makes it more likely that you will find contraband, or find a weapon, or contact someone who is actually engaging in criminal behavior.”

Racial disparity

Black drivers in Denver are pulled over disproportionately more often than white drivers, police department data shows. That started to ease after the new approach to traffic enforcement began in May.

Before the change, Black drivers made up about 15% of traffic stops, although they represent just 9% of Denver’s population, the data shows. In the six months after the change, that dropped to 12% of all stops.

“It’s encouraging that the percentage dropped,” said Roy, the nonprofit director. “It will be interesting to see if that stabilizes, or if certain officers find a way to get around it anyway. But that progress is encouraging.”

White drivers — a category that includes most Hispanic and Latino drivers — made up about 70% of stops before the policy change and 65% of stops after the change. About 66% of the city’s population is white.

Part of that change might be driven by the way police collect and document drivers’ races. The Denver Police Department started using a new software system to collect traffic-stop data around the time the new policy rolled out, Thomas said.

The police data shows a big jump in drivers marked as multiracial — from about 1% of drivers stopped to 9% — but that is because the new system allowed for that selection when the old program did not, Thomas said. The decline in drivers marked as white coincides with the increase in drivers marked as multi-racial.

The data shows that Hispanic and Latino people, who were counted across races, made up about 33% of traffic stops in the four months before the policy shift and about 29% of stops after the new approach.

Hispanic and Latino people make up about 29% of Denver’s residents.

Community response

Across the country, cities have seen mixed results when implementing similar traffic enforcement policies, said Bodah, of the Vera Institute.

In Philadelphia, there was a steep drop in targeted low-level traffic stops after a new law took effect in 2022. The city also saw a jump in stops for tinted windows — a violation that was not prohibited in the new approach. That suggests officers began using that violation for pretextual stops when other low-level options were prohibited, Bodah said.

In Fayetteville, North Carolina, officers made more traffic stops for safety violations when they changed their approach between 2013 and 2016, and traffic crashes deceased by 13%. The city also saw a 28% reduction in fatal crashes, researchers found. The change had no impact on non-traffic crime, the researchers discovered.

Nowhere, Bodah said, have researchers found a shift away from low-level traffic enforcement creates an increase in overall crime. In Denver, violent gun crime has been falling this year when compared to last.

Critics worried that Denver police would be hobbled when responding to crime after the policy began in May, and the new approach faced immediate pushback from the police union and some community members and leaders.

Residents in Denver District 10 — the central city neighborhoods — most often express a desire for more traffic enforcement, not less, Denver City Councilman Chris Hinds said. He generally feels laws should be enforced.

“If we don’t want laws then we should get them off the books, as opposed to just pretending like they don’t exist,” he said, noting that Denver decriminalized jaywalking in 2023 because of racial disparities.

At that time, 41% of people cited for jaywalking in Denver were Black, which Hinds noted was a much larger disparity than the one seen in police traffic stops.

Hinds is not aware of any active effort to review the city’s traffic laws for such a change, and said any such review would need to include significant community input.

Impact on traffic safety, finances

While traffic stops plummeted almost 50% between January and August, vehicle crashes in Denver increased by about 10%, according to police data. Crash fatalities, though, are down.

The city recorded 5,667 crashes between January and April, then saw 6,240 crashes between May and August, after the policy change, according to police data. So far this year, 67 people died in crashes, compared to 87 in all of 2023.

The data shows crashes dipped when traffic stops increased in July, and went up when traffic stops decreased in August.

Jill Locantore, executive director of Denver Streets Partnership, a nonprofit focused on pedestrian safety, said it makes sense that the 50% drop in traffic stops didn’t lead to an equal and opposite jump in crashes.

“That’s not surprising to us at all,” she said. “We know the fundamental cause of traffic violence in Denver is unsafe street design, and you can’t correct for unsafe street design through enforcement.”

Traffic enforcement can be a stopgap measure to improve safety on the way to redesigned streets, she added, but automated enforcement — like speed or red-light cameras — is more effective at changing driver behavior than individual traffic stops, she said.

Earlier this year, Mayor Mike Johnston pledged to bring automated speed camera enforcement to two high crash corridors in the city: Federal Boulevard in south Denver and on Alameda Avenue. Locantore is hopeful those cameras will make a difference.

“It can be present 24 hours a day, seven days a week,” she said. “It is predictable and understandable. People know that if they speed on this street they will get a ticket, so they change their behavior. Whereas officer-initiated enforcement is inherently sporadic.”

So far this year, fines collected by the city for expired plate tickets — a particular class of citation that drew attention after the policy change — is trending lower than the revenue collected in 2023.

The city has collected $5.3 million for tickets written between January and November 2023, compared to $4.6 million for that time frame this year.

However, ticket revenue is collected on a rolling basis and this year’s revenue will increase as more older tickets are paid, said Nancy Kuhn, spokeswoman for the city’s Department of Transportation and Infrastructure.

It could be a net positive for the city if fewer of Denver’s poorest residents are forced to pay fines for low-level traffic infractions, Bodah said.

“A lot of times people are…not renewing the registration or fixing the windshield because they don’t have the income yet to do it,” he said. “And then getting a ticket on top of that can be really debilitating. …We still see a benefit to that sort of lightening of the load on people having (police) interference for those kinds of trivial, non-safety related infractions.”

The long-term impact of Denver’s new approach to traffic enforcement remains to be seen — but what is clear is that a growing number of police departments are putting similar policies in place, said Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, a nonprofit organization that aims to improve the profession of policing.

Police departments are citing both community relations and staffing shortages as the reasons for the change, he added.

In some cities, police now give drivers a voucher to fix their vehicle instead of a ticket and a fine, Wexler said.

“It’s part of rebuilding trust with the community in the last four or five years, in the post- George Floyd period we are in,” he said. “…I can tell you, if you go to a community meeting and people complain about being overpoliced, they’re usually referring to things like this, these low-level stops.”

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