A firecracker run-walk, art fairs galore, an Andy Warhol film and more of the best things to do this weekend.
Highlights:
Tony winner Jefferson Mays plays Salieri in director Darko Tresnjak’s (A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder) take on Peter Shaffer’s 1979 play, Amadeus, about the rivalry between Salieri and Mozart in 19th Century Vienna.
Spooky Foodie, aka Ansley Layne, is bringing her ghost stories and encouraging you to tell your own at Spooky Stories After Dark, a Moth-inspired storytelling competition night at The Wolves downtown.
It’s not every day you can screenSleep, the 1964 groundbreaking film by Andy Warhol, so take advantage and grab a ticket for an evening at the Marciano Art Foundation.
Usher in the Year of the Fire Horse with the annual Firecracker Run-Walk in Chinatown, plus a celebration with lion dances, music, a dog contest and more.
Folks, we’ve reached peak art-weird. There’s a group show opening Sunday in an abandoned Sizzler. I am not making this up. Get your fill at the art fairs around town — Frieze, The Other Art Fair, Butter and Felix, for starters — or explore some of the neighborhoods with galleries, like Melrose Hill, West Hollywood and the Arts District. You’re sure to see a lot. It’s almost like we live in a city where you could just wander around and randomly come across things.
If music is more your thing, Licorice Pizza has your go-tos. On Friday, German singer-songwriter and producer Monolink’s "The Beauty Of It All Tour" stops at The Wiltern, Brandi Carlile is with The Head And The Heart at the Forum and the Fiery Furnaces are at the Masonic Lodge. At the Peacock Theater, there’s an epic “Legends Of Hip Hop” bill with Big Daddy Kane, Kurtis Blow, Kool Moe Dee, Melle Mel & Scorpio from The Furious Five, Doug E. Fresh, KRS‐One and more. Saturday, experimental hip-hop group Clipping is at the Fonda, and the artist formerly known as June Marieezy — (((O))) — is at a cool new Chinatown venue called Pacific Electric. Or you can spend the whole weekend at Ace Mission Studios in Boyle Heights, immersed in Factory 93’s two-day underground techno festival, Skyline L.A.
Through Sunday, March 15 Pasadena Playhouse 39 S. El Molino, Pasadena COST: FROM $48; MORE INFO
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Jeff Lorch
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Pasadena Playhouse
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Our friends at the L.A. Times called the new production of Amadeus at Pasadena Playhouse a “marvel to behold,” and I don’t think you can get a bigger rave than that. Tony winner Jefferson Mays plays Salieri in director Darko Tresnjak’s (A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder) take on Peter Shaffer’s 1979 play about the rivalry between Salieri and Mozart in 19th-century Vienna.
Spooky Stories After Dark
Saturday, February 28, 7 p.m. The Wolves 519 S. Spring St., Downtown L.A. COST: FREE, TWO DRINK MINIMUM; MORE INFO
One of my favorite L.A. Instagram follows is Spooky Foodie, aka Ansley Layne, who goes to restaurants in L.A. and tells all about the ghosts haunting your favorite haunts. She’s bringing her ghost stories and encouraging you to tell your own at Spooky Stories After Dark, a Moth-inspired storytelling competition night at The Wolves downtown. After each story, the speaker will be interviewed by Spooky Foodie and co-host Your Cousin Trev. You can also expect some surprise celebrity guests.
Sleep, a film by Andy Warhol featuring John Giorno
Friday, February 27, 5 p.m. to 10:30 p.m. Marciano Art Foundation 4357 Wilshire Blvd., Mid-Wilshire COST: FREE; MORE INFO
Film stills of John Giorno in Andy Warhol's Sleep. New York, NY, United States, 1963. Photo credit: Andy Warhol. 8 x 10 inches, b/w, photographic print.
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Studio Rondinone/Courtesy of the John Giorno Collection, John Giorno Archives. Studio Rondinone, New York, NY.
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Andy Warhol
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It’s not every day you can screen Sleep, the 1964 groundbreaking avant-garde film by Andy Warhol, so take advantage and grab a ticket for this evening at the Marciano Art Foundation. Coinciding with their John Giorno: No Nostalgia show, the film is five hours and 21 minutes of artist and poet (and Warhol’s then-lover) John Giorno sleeping, so needless to say, you probably don’t need to be there the whole time. The galleries will be open throughout the entire screening, so it’s also a fun chance to see some late-night art!
Black History Greens Festival
Saturday, February 28, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Virginia Ave. Park 2200 Virginia Ave., Santa Monica COST: FREE; MORE INFO
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Courtesy City of Santa Monica
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Check out three greens-cooking demonstrations with local chefs at the Black History Greens Festival in Santa Monica. The day also features family activities, including book readings and giveaways, plus performances. KJLH radio’s Arron “BOBO” Arnell returns for a second year as the master of ceremonies, and DJ Dense will be spinning throughout the event.
48th L.A. Chinatown Firecracker-Lunar New Year Celebration
Saturday, February 28 to Sunday, March 1 943 Broadway (starting line), Chinatown COST: FREE; MORE INFO
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Courtesy Firecracker 10K
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Usher in the Year of the Fire Horse with the annual run/walk in Chinatown, plus a celebration with lion dances, music, a dog contest and more. Saturday features the long 20-mile run and century bike ride, while Sunday is a festival atmosphere with the 5K and 10K races, fun runs, kids' activities and more.
Opera Noir at L.A. Opera’s Akhnaten
Saturday, February 28, 7:30 p.m. Dorothy Chandler Pavilion 135 N. Grand Ave., Downtown L.A. COST: Opening night from $134, other performances from $44; MORE INFO
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Craig T. Mathew
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L.A. Opera
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L.A. Opera welcomes back Philip Glass’ opera about ancient Egypt, Akhnaten, featuring John Holiday as the title king and mezzo-soprano Sun-Ly Pierce as his queen, Nefertiti. The opera is on at the Dorothy Chandler through March 22, but opening night is also Opera Noir, an event with the San Fernando Valley Chapter of Jack and Jill of America, which brings Black artistry and community together with opera. No matter which night you go, get there early for a pre-performance talk with Dr. Tiffany Kuo in Stern Grand Hall one hour before every performance.
Art Fairs
You have your pick of art fairs and related art events all weekend long. From the big Frieze Art Fair, which has been the jewel of L.A. Art Week since its launch here in 2019; to Felix, which makes a very cool use of space at the Hollywood Roosevelt; to The Other Art Fair in a new Culver City location (with art you might actually be able to afford for your wall); to the Black-artist focus of Butter in Inglewood, there’s really no shortage of places to see the newest artists’ work as well as old favorites.
Students walk to class at Orange Vista High School in Perris on Nov. 18, 2025.
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Kyle Grillot
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CalMatters
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Topline:
California schools faced repeated planned power outages in 2024-25 as Edison cut electricity to prevent wildfires, forcing closures and costly backup power solutions.
The backstory: Since 2012, the California Public Utilities Commission has authorized investor-owned utilities such as Edison to cut power during severe weather events to lower the risk of wildfires. The commission reviews every outage. Utilities may pay penalties — as Edison did in this case — if they don’t notify ratepayers properly or meet other standards.
Low-income students lose out on services: Because state funding to schools is based in part on student attendance, emergency events like power outages bring a financial risk. When a school closes for the day or when attendance drops, that cuts into attendance numbers. Schools then can file a waiver request with the state Department of Education to protect their funding.
Read on ... for more on what planned power outages cost schools.
This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters.
One windy morning in December 2024, teachers at Orange Vista High School rushed students into a line that stretched to the street. Southern California Edison had cut the power for parts of Riverside County to prevent its equipment from sparking a fire.
Lessons ended. Classrooms went dark. And anxious parents in the Inland Empire city of Perris waited impatiently to greet their children. A month later, the school lost power again, days after the Eaton and Palisades fires to the northwest destroyed entire Los Angeles County neighborhoods.
Orange Vista High was among at least five Riverside County school districts that reported closures during winter high winds in 2024 and 2025. Local school officials say the disruptions hit harder in economically disadvantaged districts, where families rely on critical services such as free meals and child care.
Since 2012, the California Public Utilities Commission has authorized investor-owned utilities such as Edison to cut power during severe weather events to lower the risk of wildfires. The commission reviews every outage. Utilities may pay penalties – as Edison did in this case – if they don’t notify ratepayers properly, or meet other standards.
Edison says shutoffs are necessary to save lives and protect communities. “Our mission really is to keep the power on when it is safe to do so,” said spokesperson Jeff Monford.
After the power shutoffs, the Val Verde Unified School District redirected $500,000 from the school facilities budget to buy battery storage units that could help Orange Vista High keep the lights on during future outages. But Garrick Owen, the district’s assistant superintendent, said the money would be better spent fixing the grid itself.
“If I had a magic wand, would I spend all the money to harden our schools against power outages, or would I spend it to harden the actual infrastructure of the power lines to not have the power outages?” he said.
As climate change drives more extreme weather and more blackouts across California, the cost of adaptation is a growing bill schools say they can't pay alone.
Low-income students lose out on services
Because state funding to schools is based in part on student attendance, emergency events like power outages bring a financial risk. When a school closes for the day, or when attendance drops, that cuts into attendance numbers. Schools then can file a waiver request with the state Department of Education to protect their funding.
That’s what happened at public schools throughout Riverside County during the 2024-25 school year, when smoke from nearby fires and high winds created problems.
Eight school districts confirmed to CalMatters that they filed waiver requests with the state Department of Education in December 2024 and January 2025. Three districts – Nuview Union, Perris Elementary and Perris Union High – reported closures for at least one day each. Three more – Banning Unified, Beaumont Unified and Jurupa Unified – reported material decreases in attendance on high wind days. Two districts, San Jacinto Unified and Val Verde, reported both closures and low attendance days.
According to the Val Verde district, three schools there lost a total of 13 days of instruction because of the wind events. That’s more than other Riverside County schools that confirmed filing waiver requests to CalMatters. Val Verde schools also reported lower attendance in September 2024, when smoke from the Bridge, Line and Airport fires spread to the region.
After one chaotic day in December, Orange Vista High principal LaKrecia Graham said school administrators bought floodlights to help keep classes in session in case the power went out again. But when the next outage happened, so many worried parents picked up their children that the district decided to close anyway.
“It disrupts a lot of things and it puts people in a panic that I don't think is necessary,” Graham said. “And that's what's gonna keep happening.”
Chairs placed on top of desks inside an empty classroom.
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Kyle Grillot
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CalMatters
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LaKrecia Graham, principal of Orange Vista High School, in Perris, on Nov. 18, 2025.
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Kyle Grillot
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CalMatters
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The lack of power isn’t just an inconvenience. It can pose a safety risk for students, said Catalina Chrest, principal of Skyview Elementary School, also in Perris. Children may hurt themselves navigating dark rooms, or they can lose access to essential needs like water, heaters and air conditioning.
Schools serve as community hubs. For low-income families and students with disabilities, losing access to them means more than a missed day of learning — it means losing child supervision, free meals and critical support services.
The meal they eat at school “might be one of their most nutritious meals of the day,” Chrest said.
In the Perris Elementary School District, more than 90% of students are low-income. At Skyview Academy and Clearwater Elementary School, wind whistling through buildings made classrooms frigid. Bathrooms went completely dark. Parents told school staff that their food was spoiling at home.
The outages “impact our families greater than families in a more affluent neighborhood,” said Perris Elementary School District superintendent Bruce Bivins.
Utilities weigh harms and benefits
When investor-owned utilities decide to turn the power off, the California Public Utilities Commission requires that they balance the potential harms against the benefits. Utilities regulated by the CPUC also must give notice before shutoffs and offer resources to make the outage easier on residents and schools.
In Riverside County, school officials and teachers said delayed notice during the winter wind events made it difficult to prepare for the shutoffs. At Orange Vista High, Graham said the school received notice of a potential outage at a certain time, but it came earlier, so staff was unprepared.
Paula Ford, assistant superintendent of business services at Jurupa Unified School District, said “actually, we would receive a notice that the power was down maybe an hour after the power was already down.”
After the January shutoffs that darkened Riverside County schools, the CPUC fined Southern California Edison $7.8 million for violating notification requirements. Terrie Prosper, a CPUC spokesperson, says the commission is still investigating Edison’s handling of the December shutoffs.
She added the utilities commission is closely monitoring Edison’s work to reduce power shutoffs.
“We understand that PSPS events can be disruptive for schools,” she said. “However, these actions are taken out of serious wildfire concerns. California has experienced devastating wildfires in recent years that have destroyed communities, closed schools for extended periods, and placed lives at risk.”
Clearwater Elementary in Perris, on Nov. 18, 2025.
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Kyle Grillot
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Southern California Edison did not comment on the penalty.
Edison spokesperson Monford said that, when possible, notifications for public safety power shutoffs take place three days in advance.
“In some instances, we are unable to send advanced notifications due to emergent weather,” Monford said. “This was especially the case last winter, when we had extraordinarily new wind events.”
Monford added the utility offers assistance to help schools become more resilient to the power outages. But not all schools benefit from the help.
The utility lends power generators to schools most affected by the power outages. He added the utility hopes to expand the program to lend battery storage systems. Edison also invited some districts, including the Jurupa Unified School District and San Jacinto School District, to daily emergency coordination calls, Monford said.
Critics said the outages may end up causing more harm than the events they’re responding to.
“They put a lot of time and effort and money, which I do not begrudge at all, into the analytics of fire risk to calculate the risk of a wildfire actually starting in certain weather conditions,” said Melissa Kasnitz, legal director for the Center for Accessible Technology. “What they have not done is put any fraction of effort into evaluating the risk of what happens when you turn people's power off.”
In response, Edison directed CalMatters to tools it uses to analyze shutoff risks, and to reports the utility has filed with regulators after incidents.
Power outages bring a financial toll
School administrators say it’s unfair for districts to carry the financial burden of a problem they didn’t create. They also have to contend with a state education system that financially punishes districts for low attendance that results from emergencies out of their control.
Districts with fewer resources like Perris Elementary School District can’t afford generators and have to prioritize other needs.
Bivins said the district looked into backup power but couldn’t afford generators or battery storage. The district is smaller – serving only elementary students – so it obtains less funding than Val Verde Unified or other unified districts. Schools serving more low-income students also tend to see lower attendance rates, he said, meaning even less money coming in.
With so many urgent needs competing for limited dollars, a generator that might only be used a few times a year doesn’t make the cut.
“That could be better security on our campuses, more modernized facilities, better access to technology, or other things they can actually utilize right now versus the preparation for the possible one day this year (the power goes out),” Bivins said.
Student teacher Mayela Covarrubias works with first-grade students.
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Kyle Grillot
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CalMatters
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An emergency generator on loan from Southern California Edison at Peralta Elementary in Riverside, on Nov. 19, 2025.
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Kyle Grillot
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CalMatters
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But even schools that can afford generators face hidden costs from the outages.
In nearby Jurupa Valley, Peralta Elementary School was able to keep its doors open, the lights on and the heating and cooling systems running.
The Jurupa Unified School District spent more than $364,000 on two generators – each capable of powering an elementary school – and is investing in infrastructure upgrades to make deploying them easier, Ford said.
Because Peralta Elementary is in a high fire risk area surrounded by brush, Southern California Edison also loaned the school another generator through its pilot program. So far this year, the school hasn’t needed to use it.
Still, the outages take a financial toll. Even if schools are open, some parents keep children home – costing the district attendance-based funding.
“Because we stayed open … we're actually impacted more heavily than schools that close,” Ford said.
To obtain a waiver from the state to protect funding from an emergency, schools have to submit paperwork signed by the school board and county superintendent explaining what happened, and certify they have a plan to keep students learning during the disruption. But the process is uncertain: Schools don't know how much funding they'll keep until the state reviews the waiver request and runs its own numbers. Ford said that more leniency on the conditions necessary to qualify for a waiver could help schools during emergency events.
Bivins, the Perris Elementary Unified superintendent, said the state should fund schools based on enrollment, not attendance, so that emergencies don’t threaten budgets.
Michelle Hatfield, a spokesperson for the state Department of Education, said any changes to rules for how schools handle planned outages – and any proposals to fund schools by enrollment rather than by attendance – would require legislation.
Even districts investing in backup power say they can't fully close the gap on their own.
At Orange Vista High School, newly installed battery storage units will help keep the lights on during the next planned outage. It’s all the Val Verde Unified District could do, said Owen, the assistant superintendent.
But the battery storage systems don’t really solve the broader problem. If a blackout happens at multiple schools over multiple days, “we don't have a plan for that,” he said.
Equipping every school in the district with generators would probably cost millions. "It's one of those numbers I don't need to know, because there's not gonna be that funding," Owen said.
With a significant loss of jobs, entertainment professionals in L.A. are hurting these days. Many are turning to another profession, which also deals with people's emotions: therapy.
Why it matters: Last year there was a 16% decline in filming in the region, according to Film LA. For those seeking stability — without sacrificing authenticity — retraining as a therapist makes sense.
Why now: A psychology professor at Antioch University, Charley Lang, says at least half of his students in his graduate classes come from entertainment careers.
All you have to do is grab a drink with a friend, eavesdrop at a coffee shop, or open your eyes to see that entertainment professionals in L.A. are hurting these days. Last year there was a 16% decline in filming in the region, according to Film LA, and between 2022 and 2024, L.A. County is estimated to have lost more than 42,000 motion picture-related jobs.
I know this pain, personally. I was a TV writer for years, but my last writer’s room job was in 2021. Luckily, I was able to pivot to copywriting as I continue to work on my own projects, but I do wonder what the rest of my colleagues are up to. Where have the thousands of highly skilled entertainment professionals gone?
Turns out, school.
Specifically, to become therapists.
I first noticed this trend over a decade ago in 2013. I had just moved back to L.A. from New York and I started seeing a new therapist. Over the course of our sessions, she revealed to me that she used to be an actor — and quite a successful one. She was a co-star on a hit sitcom for nine seasons.
But despite the consistent work, she wasn’t fulfilled. She said acting was mostly sitting around in a trailer waiting and she craved more intellectual stimulation. So she went back to school and became a therapist, the irony being that she never fully escaped Hollywood. Today, as an L.A. based therapist, she spends most of her days listening to frustrated actors and writers complain about the biz. Ahh, the circle of life!
Not only was my therapist a former actor, I started to notice more and more of my peers and friends making the switch. I met Alan, 40, who prefers to be anonymous because he doesn’t want his patients knowing about his private life, at a co-working space. We both belonged to a charming apartment-turned-writer’s haven in Silver Lake.
At the time, Alan was a busy film producer, plugging away at his own feature script on the side. But despite having a shiny career working with hip actors and directors, he wasn’t happy.
He remembers going to schmoozy parties where everyone would name drop and brag about what they were working on.
“I had all those fancy things to drop, too, but it meant nothing, it didn’t make me feel any better about myself,” he said. “If I can’t even talk about what I’m up to without feeling sad, that’s kind of a problem.”
Alan started to realize maybe producing wasn’t his destiny. He was going through the motions. Things started to fall into place when he started therapy.
“Therapy made me feel more like myself. I just felt a little bit more enlivened… the rest of the week kind of deadened me,” he said.
He loved how real and deep the conversations were and became intrigued by the idea of becoming a therapist himself. He started taking a few psychology classes and was instantly hooked. Now, he has a thriving private practice and hasn’t looked back.
Primal emotions
Julie Mond is a therapist and an actor. Unlike Alan, Mond still loves acting, it’s not something she grew out of. She just needed a more stable career as she continued to pursue her passion. Becoming a therapist has actually liberated her to focus on the kind of acting she actually wants to do. Because she’s financially stable she can now pick and choose the kinds of projects that feel worth her time.
When I ask Mond why so many entertainment professionals become therapists she reflects on a couple of things. She said performers and directors crave “connecting authentically, being present moment-to-moment, being real and honest. We’re digging for these primal emotions.” All things you have to do as a therapist.
She also has another theory: “A lot of artists go to therapy. Many of us who become therapists have been in therapy and it's changed our lives. I think people in L.A. have been on a healing journey and want to give back.”
Charley Lang, who teaches at Antioch University.
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Jaymes Mihaliak
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Courtesy Charley Lang
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Even though I'm personally meeting more people who are becoming therapists, I wondered if it was an actual trend or just a coincidence.
So I talked with psychology professor Charley Lang at Antioch University to get his take. Lang, who's been teaching psychology for 30 years, said that in his graduate classes, at least 50% of the students come from entertainment careers.
When I asked why they make the switch, he’s blunt: stability.
That’s why Lang himself became a therapist decades ago.
Lang was an actor on Broadway, but eventually hit a wall.
“I had a nice career as an actor, I essentially got to do everything I wanted to do," he said. "But then I was in my late 30s and I was like, ‘Do I always want to be praying for another guest spot on a sitcom in order to feel secure and OK?’”
Does he have any regrets or miss acting? On the contrary, he tells a story:
“I had become a therapist and stopped acting and a friend of mine was directing a play at the Ahmanson and he was like, ‘Please do this play.’ And I was able to figure it out and I was just dipping my toe back in to see what it was like and it was a six-week run of the play. And at the end of the first week I remember standing in the wings waiting to make my entrance and thinking, ‘Oh my god haven’t we already told this freaking story?’ It was like Groundhog Day. It was the same story over and over.”
As a therapist, he said he loves that every day is different.
The point isn’t that working in entertainment is bad and therapy is perfect. To me, the takeaway is that it’s never too late to make a change. That just because something used to work for you doesn’t mean you’re committed to doing it forever.
Or in Mond's case, maybe there is a way to continue doing what you love, but more sustainably.
In today’s fragile and volatile job market, it’s nice to know that you can always begin again. Just because a job or career ends, doesn’t mean your life is over.
If, in the future, I’m too fried, burnt out, or tired of the rollercoaster of being a writer, maybe I’ll embark on a second career.
But until then, I’m still riding the dragon.
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A sunny day with highs in the mid-70s and low 80s.
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Mel Melcon
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Getty Images
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QUICK FACTS
Today’s weather: Mostly sunny
Beaches: Mid-70s
Mountains: 70s to 80s at lower elevations
Inland: 81 to 86 degrees
Warnings and advisories: None
What to expect: Warmer for the valleys where temperatures there will hover in the mid- to upper 80s.
Read on ... for where it will be the hottest today.
QUICK FACTS
Today’s weather: Mostly sunny
Beaches: Mid-70s
Mountains: 70s to 80s at lower elevations
Inland: 81 to 86 degrees
Warnings and advisories: None
We're in for another warm and sunny day in SoCal.
Daytime highs for the beaches will reach the mid-70s and up to the low 80s more inland. Downtown L.A. will see temperatures up to 83 degrees.
Temperatures for the valley communities and the Inland Empire will reach the mid-80s. The western San Fernando Valley will see temps in the upper 80s, up to 89 degrees for Woodland Hills.
In Coachella Valley, expect another day with highs in the 90s, up to 96 degrees.
Friday is expected to be the warmest day of the week.
Kavish Harjai
writes about how people get around L.A. and the challenges they might face.
Published February 26, 2026 5:00 AM
A 2022 LAPD policy in part instructs officers to minimize stops for minor equipment violations.
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Courtesy LAPD Valley Traffic Division via Twitter
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Newly released data from the city show that Los Angeles police officers use minor traffic stops as a way to investigate Black and Latino people on suspicion of committing a more serious crime at a higher rate than their share of the citywide population.
Pretextual stops: Police sometimes use violations of the vehicle code to stop drivers and investigate them for a more serious crime unrelated to the traffic stop, such as possessing drugs or firearms. These are known as pretextual stops.
LAPD’s policy: In 2022, the LAPD adopted a policy that officers should only conduct pretextual stops when they are “acting upon articulable information” that the person is close to a serious crime that’s worth investigating.
Several reports: In the last month, two city departments released analyses of pretextual stops since the police adopted its policy. A nonprofit called Catalyst California did a broader analysis of minor traffic stops, too.
Read on … to see what the analyses found.
Newly released data from the city show that Los Angeles police officers use minor traffic stops as a way to investigate Black and Latino people on suspicion of committing a more serious crime at a higher rate than their share of the citywide population.
The LAPD adopted a policy about so-called pretextual stops and began tracking the practice in 2022.
In a report released at the end of January, the city’s chief legislative analyst found that Black people were involved in nearly 31% of pretextual stops conducted by LAPD officers between spring 2022 and fall 2025. According to 2023 Census estimates, Black people make up 8% of the city’s population.
According to the report, "Hispanic/Latino" people, who make up just less than half the city’s population, were the subjects of 56% of pretextual stops.
That analysis, along with a separate report by LAPD, found that of the more than 760,000 people involved in traffic stops between spring of 2022 and fall of 2025, 9% to 10% of them were stopped pretextually.
Chauncee Smith, an associate director of the racial justice-focused nonprofit Catalyst California, said LAPD’s data is “under inclusive” since it relies on officers subjectively deciding when a stop is pretextual.
He said an analysis of data from Catalyst California, published in February, demonstrates that pretextual stops don’t result in evidence discovery enough to make up for the negative impacts of the practice.
“It's affecting the lives of many Black and Latinx Angelenos on an everyday basis,” Smith said, adding that pretextual stops often result in harassment, dehumanization and excessive ticketing or fining of communities of color.
Pretextual stops
Police sometimes use violations of the vehicle code to stop drivers and investigate them for a more serious crime unrelated to the traffic stop, such as possessing drugs or firearms, according to Deepak Premkumar, a research fellow for the Public Policy Institute of California.
”Law enforcement officers see tons of violations, and we give them a lot of discretion to determine who they should stop and when,” Premkumar told LAist.
A plausible example of what a pretextual stop could look like is if police see a car matching the description of one that was involved in a crime in the area, then pull that car over for a broken taillight, Premkumar said.
The policy the LAPD adopted in 2022 outlines that officers:
Can only conduct pretextual stops as long as they are “acting upon articulable information” that the person is close to a serious crime that’s worth investigating.
Should minimize stops for minor equipment violations, such as broken taillights, unless the violation “interferes with public safety.”
State the reason for the stop, whether pretextual or not, while their body-worn cameras are filming.
Despite the adoption of the policy, Catalyst California’s analysis found that the proportion of all officer-initiated stops that are for minor traffic violations has “remained relatively constant since 2019.”
What to know about the recent analyses of pretextual stops
After the police adopted its policy in 2022, officers began indicating whether a stop was pretextual or not. The Chief Legislative Analyst and police department rely on this officer discretion in their analyses, which can be found in this council file. As a result, they say they don’t have a point of comparison for before the policy was adopted.
In its analysis, Catalyst California looked at all stops for minor traffic violations, which are the kind of traffic violations that are often used to start a pretextual stop. By combining that data with search data, Catalyst California endeavors to approximate a before-and-after look at the LAPD’s policy.
Racial disparities
The analysis from the city’s chief legislative analyst included a comparison of pretextual stop rates for different ethnic and racial groups in L.A. compared to their share of the citywide population.
The analysis found that "Hispanic/Latino" and Black people were overrepresented in data on pretextual stops compared to their share of the population.
L.A. Police Capt. Shannon White drafted the department’s report of the same data, which did not include an ethnic or racial breakdown of those involved in pretextual stops.
At a Los Angeles Police Commission Meeting in February, when she presented the department’s analysis, White said Census estimates for the city don’t necessarily align with “the actual breakdown of our suspects of crime,” who, theoretically, are the subjects of pretextual stops.
“When you look at the actual breakdown of our suspects of crime…what you will find is that they skew towards communities of color for various societal reasons,” White said.
According to the LAPD’s analysis, people in Central and South L.A. were subjects of pretextual at higher rates than in the Valley and West L.A.
Some commissioners at the meeting questioned that disparity.
“Something just doesn't add up,” Commission President Teresa Sánchez-Gordon said. “Is it racial profiling? Is that bias? Implicit, explicit bias that's in the report?”
Discovery rates
The police’s analysis found that searches during pretextual stops yielded contraband, such as firearms and other weapons or drugs, in about every 3 in 10 cases. “Narco-related” evidence is what’s most commonly found in the searches.
Catalyst California’s report looked more specifically at different kinds of searches and how likely they are to lead to evidence discovery.
The nonprofit found that since 2022, when officers used consent-only searches during stops for minor traffic violations, they discovered evidence 3% to 10% of the time. The rate was similarly low when the person stopped was on parole or probation.
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According to Catalyst California’s analysis, the type of search most likely to lead to discovery of evidence is when there’s an existing search or arrest warrant for the person stopped.
“This was likely because they occurred in situations when there was a higher likelihood of a significant violation, beyond mere pretext,” the nonprofit's researchers wrote.
